Journal Title
Title of Journal: Apidologie
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Authors: Marília Dantas E Silva Mauro Ramalho Daniela Monteiro
Publish Date: 2013/07/11
Volume: 44, Issue: 6, Pages: 699-707
Abstract
The present study discusses spatial variations in the community structure of stingless bees as well as associated ecological factors by comparing the nest densities in two stages of forest regeneration in a Brazilian Tropical Atlantic rainforest The stingless bee nests were sampled in sixtyfour 25 × 25 m plots 4 ha in four replicates of two forest categories a mature or old growth stage of forest regeneration and b earlystage forest regeneration Tree cavities were the major nesting substrate and 91 nests were found within the total sampling area of 32 ha 28 nests/ha constructed by 12 stingless bee species The four most abundant species showed no significant differences in terms their use of tree circumference at breast height CBH categories between 60 and 150 cm The spatial distributions of the CBH categories were mainly random or uniform and the principal difference between the forest stages was the density of their largest trees CBH 110 cm This structural difference in the vegetation contrasted with the small spatial variation p 005 of the stingless bee community structure species composition richness and nest abundance This unexpected spatial homogeneity could be related to similar and abundant availabilities of the largest nesting sites and to the existence of similar mechanisms controlling cavity use in both forest categories The low nestpertree frequency 1 nest per 100 trees with CBH 60 cm for instance suggests that the availability of tree nesting sites is not limiting stingless bees Alternatively the stochasticity that permeates the temporal dynamics of highly diverse tree communities may also neutralize any latent competition between stingless beesWe are grateful to Michelin for logistic support CAPES for providing the doctoral grant to the first author as well as CNPq process numbers 481113/20045 and 478271/2008 and FAPESB APR0114/2006 for financial support We also thank the ECOPOL team at UFBA for their help with the fieldwork
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