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Pollen Collected by Stingless Bees: A Contribution to Understanding Amazonian Biodiversity

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Book cover Pot-Pollen in Stingless Bee Melittology

Abstract

The Amazon region encompasses one of the largest terrestrial biodiversity reservoirs on earth. To understand how all these species interact and maintain biological networks is a challenge for anyone interested in complex questions. Here, we will consider bees and the plants used by them as food sources to gain insight into the Amazonian “tangled bank,” as phrased by Darwin. We start the chapter with the evolutionary origin of bees and flowers and their confluent trajectories over the last 120 million years. We then move on to studies using pollen to discuss the mutualistic/antagonistic sides of pollen-consuming behaviors. Finally, we take the accumulated knowledge about plants and bees in the Amazon region and relate it to the sustainability of meliponiculture activity within this region. In addition to producing honey, meliponiculture is considered to be a socially, economically, and ecologically important activity to promote real, regional development.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Patricia Vit for inviting this contribution and the reviewers for all the corrections. We also thank the Laboratory of Palynology of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA) for sample preparation and analysis, Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas (FAPEAM) for the scholarship awarded to the third author and for funding (Proc. 062.01180/2015), and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for the scholarship awarded to the first author and for funding (Proc. 477127/2011-8).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Laboratório de Palinologia, Av. André Araujo, 2936 – Petrópolis, CEP, 69067-375, Manaus, AM, Brazil

    Maria L. Absy & Marcos G. Ferreira

  2. Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri, Curso de Licenciatura em Educação do Campo, Alto da Jacuba 5000, CEP, 39100-000, Diamantina, MG, Brazil

    André R. Rech

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  1. Maria L. Absy
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  2. André R. Rech
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  3. Marcos G. Ferreira
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Correspondence to Maria L. Absy .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Food Science Department, Faculty of Pharmacy and Bioanalysis, Universidad de Los Andes, Merida, Venezuela

    Patricia Vit

  2. Biology Department, School of Philosophy, Sciences and Literature, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, Brazil

    Silvia R.M. Pedro

  3. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Panama

    David W. Roubik

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Absy, M.L., Rech, A.R., Ferreira, M.G. (2018). Pollen Collected by Stingless Bees: A Contribution to Understanding Amazonian Biodiversity. In: Vit, P., Pedro, S., Roubik, D. (eds) Pot-Pollen in Stingless Bee Melittology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61839-5_3

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