Food diversity of Tetragonisca angustula in agricultural landscape and fragments of semi-deciduous seasonal forests

• Grant number: 18/17663-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2019
• End date: December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Ecosystems Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Roberta Cornélio Ferreira Nocelli
• Grantee: Renan Brunelli Radice
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Agrárias (CCA). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). Araras , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The survey of native bees and their interactions with plant communities are of paramount importance in planning conservation strategies for native ecosystems. The decline of these pollinators in agricultural ecosystems is becoming more and more worrying as a large part of agricultural productivity depends on them. The aim of this study is to identify the floral sources of pollen used by Tetragonisca angustula (Latreille) - Apidae, Meliponina - in an agricultural landscape in the interior of the state of São Paulo, where sugar cane monocultures predominate and small fragments of semideciduous seasonal forests. We want to verify if all the colonies of T. angustula forage the same sources of food; and from the characterization of its menu, make considerations about the adequacy of the rural landscape in terms of the ecological restoration, aiming at the regional maintenance of T. angustula. Pollen from five rational boxes of T. angustula will be collected every month and monthly, native and exotic flowering plants will be sampled from the meliponary by means of four transects in a radius of 500 meters. The data obtained will represent the proportions of pollen collected from each plant species in each season of the year, which will be analyzed in environment R to create networks of interactions of T. angustula with the foraged plant species throughout the year, which will be created from the pollen analyzes obtained and comparisons in the palinoteca, which will be assembled with flowering specimens around the bees' collection area, a network of interactions will be created.