Estrutura da paisagem e tipos de vegetação como preditores das assembleias de abelhas e seus grupos funcionais no litoral norte do Brasil

Abstract

Knowledge about the ecological processes that generate patterns of diversity and distribution of bees in the Amazon region remains significantly out of date compared to other global regions, especially in coastal areas. Likewise, understanding how changes in the structure of the landscape and the type of vegetation will affect the distribution and diversity of bees and their functional groups in the Neotropics is still an underexplored field. Therefore, in this thesis we evaluate how the structure of the landscape and the type of local vegetation shape the diversity and distribution of bees and their functional groups. In Chapter I, we investigated the effects of landscape structure on the structure of bee assemblages and their functional groups. In Chapter II, we evaluate the effects of landscape composition and configuration on Euglossini bee communities. In Chapter III, we researched the structure of bee communities between two forest types (mangrove and estuarine floodplain) dominant on the Amazon coast, as well as the effects of the surrounding landscape on the communities. In Chapter IV, we investigated the structure of Euglossini bee communities in mangroves and estuarine floodplains between two dominant forest types on the Amazon coast. We observed that the heterogeneity and average shape of the landscape at shorter spatial scales positively affected the bee community and its functional groups on the Amazon coast (Chapter I). Forest cover is the main driver of the diversity and composition of Euglossini bees at a local scale in the Amazon coast (Chapter II). We observed that the composition of bees is markedly different between forest types, and that the estuarine floodplain is home to greater abundance, richness and diversity of species. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of the landscape surrounding this vegetation positively affected all community descriptors evaluated (Chapter III). Finally, we found that the composition of Euglossini bees is weakly different between forest types, and that the estuarine floodplain is home to greater abundance and richness of species (Chapter IV). This thesis contributes to the understanding of the ecological processes that shaped the patterns of bee diversity on the coast of the Neotropical region and the Brazilian Amazon at different spatial scales. We hope that these results encourage and stimulate subsequent studies on the ecology and diversity of bees in the Amazon region, contributing to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of these important aspects of biodiversity.