Abstract
Social wasps are broadly distributed in Brazil, and their distribution is closely related to local plant composition. However, only a few studies on the diversity of these insects have been carried out in northeastern Brazil, and in Caatinga Biome the diversity is probably underestimated due to the lack of inventories for the region. Aiming at advancing the knowledge about the wasp fauna, we carried out this study from October 2005 to September 2006 in Ibipeba, northeastern Brazil. We collected 172 wasps of five genera and eight species, and recorded Polybia ruficeps Schrottky, 1902 for the first time in the state of Bahia. The most abundant species was Polybia ignobilis (Haliday, 1836) (n = 69), and the least abundant were Brachygastra lecheguana (Latreille, 1824) (n = 2) and Polistes canadensis (Linnaeus, 1758) (n = 2). The present study inventory focused exclusively on the diversity of social wasps in an area of Caatinga, which contributes to advance the local fauna knowledge.
Highlights
Social wasps are broadly distributed in Brazil, and their distribution is closely related to local plant composition
Social wasps of the subfamily Polistinae are very diverse in Brazil, with ca. 320 species described, among which there are over 100 endemic species (Carpenter and Marques 2001; Prezoto et al 2007)
The small fauna of social wasps found in the present study is closely associated with the study site, a vegetation mosaic typical of the Caatinga
Summary
Social wasps of the subfamily Polistinae are very diverse in Brazil, with ca. 320 species described, among which there are over 100 endemic species (Carpenter and Marques 2001; Prezoto et al 2007). Due to the ecological importance and abundance of social wasps, studies on this group have been carried out in different regions and environments, such as agroecosystems (Auad et al 2010; De Souza et al 2011), Atlantic Forest (Souza et al 2012; Togni et al 2014), Amazonian Rainforest (Silveira et al 2012), Cerrado (Santos et al 2009; Henrique-Simões et al 2012), and rupestrian fields (Prezoto and Clemente 2010; Souza et al 2010). Other biomes, such as the Caatinga, have been poorly studied
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