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Urbanization Affects Composition but Not Richness of Flower Visitors in the Yungas of Argentina

  • Insect Pollinators
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Abstract

Urban areas represent a spatially small impact in relation to other land-uses such as livestock and agriculture, but they undergo rapid changes. Such changes involve their size, shape, interconnectivity, and composition of natural patches. Habitat loss generated by urbanization affects the diversity and abundance of bees and other flower visitors in many sites. In general, the presence of urban areas represents a strict boundary to flower visitors and restricts their movement between natural and suburban habitat patches. The aim of this work is to evaluate how the flower visitor assemblage change along an urban-natural gradient in northwest Argentina. We established five areas in the Yungas ecoregion and sampled three sites with different degrees of urbanization (urban, suburban, and natural), at each area, reaching 15 sites. At each site, we sampled flower visitors during 5-min observation periods done over flowering plants. We found 197 morphospecies of flower-visiting insects along the gradient and an invariant richness, abundance, and Shannon diversity. The assemblage presented the same taxonomic group distributions in the three categories established. However, in urban sites, solitary bees and bees with soil borrowing nesting type predominate, while eusocial and cavity nesting bees were the main flower visitors in suburban sites. Our results suggest that the cities of northwestern Argentina are not a strict boundary for flower visitors; however, urbanization seems to be selecting and favoring certain flower-visitor species traits.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Mariano Lucia and Dr. Leopoldo Alvarez who helped with pollinator identification, Carlos Cabrera for the GIS analyses for providing the site classification and for the Yungas distribution map, two anonymous reviewer for their comment which helped to improve the manuscript, and Dra. Sofia Nanni who help with English language.

Funding

This manuscript was funded by a fellowship by CONICET and a grant from SIGMA Xi foundation. Alejandro A. Amado has a doctoral fellowship and Natacha P. Chacoff is a carrier researcher from CONICET.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Estudios Territoriales Ambientales y Sociales (CETAS-UNJu), Jujuy, Argentina

    A. A. Amado De Santis

  2. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas (INECOA), Universidad Nacional de Jujuy - CONICET, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, S. S. de Jujuy, Argentina

    A. A. Amado De Santis

  3. Instituto de Ecología Regional (CONICET-UNT), Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (UNT), Tucumán, Argentina

    N. P. Chacoff

  4. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel Lillo, Univ Nacional de Tucumán (UNT), Tucumán, Argentina

    N. P. Chacoff

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  1. A. A. Amado De Santis
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  2. N. P. Chacoff
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by AADS and NPC. The first draft of the manuscript was written by AADS. NPC commented on previous versions of the manuscript and she read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to A. A. Amado De Santis.

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Amado De Santis, A.A., Chacoff, N.P. Urbanization Affects Composition but Not Richness of Flower Visitors in the Yungas of Argentina. Neotrop Entomol 49, 568–577 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-020-00772-z

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