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Responses of bees to habitat loss in fragmented landscapes of Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest

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Abstract

Context

Loss of natural habitat can isolate pollinator populations and negatively affect sexual reproduction of animal-pollinated plants.

Objective

We evaluated how the loss of natural forest affects pollinator diversity in the understory of the Atlantic Rainforest in Northeastern Brazil.

Methods

We focused on bees, the main group of pollinators for angiosperms. We assessed how changes in forest cover at regional (36 km2) and local (0.36 km2) scales affect bee richness and abundance.

Results

We sampled 492 bees from 59 species, of which 58 % were above ground nesting species and 73 % exhibited some level of sociality. Our results show that the loss of forest had negative effects on understory bee abundance, which was particularly accentuated for species that nest above ground. However, for social bees the effect of changes in forest cover at a local scale depended on regional forest cover, negative effects being only detected when landscapes had at least 35 % of forest. For bee richness, the null model was among the best models bringing considerable uncertainty about landscape effects on bee richness.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that management strategies and conservation practices must integrate proper actions that consider both local and regional scales. For existing fragmented landscapes, it is important to increase forest availability at the regional scale, while also maintaining high environmental heterogeneity at the local scale. We believe that with proper landscape planning this multiscalar approach can be not only more effective, but also easier to implement.

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Acknowledgments

We want to thank the financial research support by INOMEP-PRONEX-CNPQ, and essential financial support by FAPESB, CNPQ and CAPES. Jesus Aguirre-Gutierrez helped with forest cover calculations. Dra. Favízia F. Oliveira and MSc. Thiago Mahlmann aided in bee identification and information about bee nests and sociability. Dr. Luciano E. Lopes, Dr. Jean Paul Metzger, Dra. Astrid M. P. Kleinert, Dra. Camila Magalhães Pigozzo and Dr. Eduardo Mariano Neto add helpful and valuable comments in previous versions of this manuscript. Dr. Cory S. Sheffield add helpful comments and did the English revision. We also thank the Landscape Ecology Editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their excellent contributions to the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biology Department, Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, SP, 14040-901, Brazil

    Patrícia A. Ferreira & Danilo Boscolo

  2. School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Luísa G. Carvalheiro

  3. Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden University, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Luísa G. Carvalheiro & Jacobus C. Biesmeijer

  4. Departament of Ecology, University of Brasília, Brasília, DF, 70910-900, Brazil

    Luísa G. Carvalheiro

  5. Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park, 904, 1098 XH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jacobus C. Biesmeijer

  6. Biology Institute, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, BA, 40170-290, Brazil

    Pedro L. B. Rocha & Blandina F. Viana

Authors
  1. Patrícia A. Ferreira
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  2. Danilo Boscolo
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  3. Luísa G. Carvalheiro
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  4. Jacobus C. Biesmeijer
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  5. Pedro L. B. Rocha
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  6. Blandina F. Viana
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Correspondence to Patrícia A. Ferreira.

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Ferreira, P.A., Boscolo, D., Carvalheiro, L.G. et al. Responses of bees to habitat loss in fragmented landscapes of Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest. Landscape Ecol 30, 2067–2078 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-015-0231-3

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