Monitoring of tube‐nesting bees and wasps with bamboo tube nest traps of different types in two types of forests in temperate Japan

Abstract

AbstractTube‐nesting bees and wasps were collected with bamboo tube nest traps in a cherry blossom forest and an old secondary forest in Tama Forest Science Garden in the western suburbs of Tokyo. Curtain type traps, in which bamboo tubes were vertically arranged, attracted more bees and wasps to nests than bundle type traps, in which bamboo tubes were bundled haphazardly. The attractiveness of small tubes was similar between small tube traps, which were only composed of small tubes (about 4 mm in diameter), and size mixture traps, which set small tubes together with larger tubes, indicating that the presence of the larger species did not affect the nesting of small species. In the cherry forest, which was characterized by the sparse distribution of deciduous cherry trees with a thin canopy layer and rich growth of weeds, Megachilidae, Colletidae, Sphecidae and Eumenidae were common. In the shady secondary forest, where evergreen trees (Abies firma Sieb. et Zucc., Quercus glauca Thunb.) and shrubs (Aucuba japonica Thunb., Eurya japonica Thunb., Camellia japonica L.) were prevalent, Pompilidae was abundant. Among five species of Crabronidae recorded in this study, four were collected mostly in the cherry forest, whereas the most abundant, Trypoxylon malaisei Gussakovskij, was also common in the secondary forest. Likewise, Auplopus carbonarius (Scopoli) (Pompilidae) was common in the secondary forest and not rare in the cherry forest. These results suggest that the tube‐nesting bees and wasps can be a good bioindicator for monitoring environment.