Diversidade de abelhas e suas interações com as plantas frente às mudanças de uso e cobertura do solo

Abstract

Bees are important pollinators in nature and play a crucial role in maintaining plant diversity and food crop production. However, the increasing changes in land use and cover generated by environmental extractivism and urban growth represent a constant threat to the group. These anthropogenic actions generate habitat fragmentation and loss, becoming one of the main drivers of the global decline of pollinators. Through focal observations of flowers and active bee collection, this study, carried out in an urban area in a highly biodiverse region, aimed to: i) present a list of species that occur in the region and ii) investigate the response of bees to anthropogenic changes in the landscape in terms of the effects on species richness, abundance and composition, as well as the networks of interactions between these organisms and the plants they visit. To achieve these aims, we collected bees at five green areas between November 2022 and April 2023 and recorded their interactions with plants at each collection site. The most abundant bee species at all collection points included generalist and eusocial bees, such as Paratrigona lineata, Trigona spinipes and the introduced species Apis mellifera, as well as the solitary and generalist species, Eulaema nigrita. Although the richness of bee species did not vary significantly between the sites studied, the species composition showed significant differences. Network analysis revealed that bee-plant interactions are specialized and modular at all sites, indicating that interactions between bees and plants reflect a species preference for a particular group or organism. Although changes in land use did not significantly affect the metrics of network specialization and modularity, understanding these patterns is crucial for guiding biodiversity conservation and management efforts at each study site. In addition, keystone bee and plant species were identified based on species centrality and strength metrics, highlighting their roles in ecological communities. This study contributes to the knowledge of bee ecology and bee-plant interactions in the environments studied, providing information that can be applied to biodiversity conservation and the promotion of sustainable urban planning practices.