School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, 3541 Dana Building, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48109, USA.
Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California-Berkley, 130 Mulford Hall, Berkeley, California, 94720-3114, USA.
Ecol Appl. 2017 Sep;27(6):1815-1826. doi: 10.1002/eap.1568. Epub 2017 Jul 10.
Patterns of bee abundance and diversity across different spatial scales have received thorough research consideration. However, the impact of short- and long-term temporal resource availability on biodiversity has been less explored. This is highly relevant in tropical agricultural systems for pollinators, as many foraging periods of pollinators extend beyond flowering of any single crop species. In this study, we sought to understand how bee communities in tropical agroecosystems changed between seasons, and if short- and long-term floral resource availability influenced their diversity and abundance. We used a threshold analysis approach in order to explore this relationship at two time scales. This study took place in a region dominated by coffee agroecosystems in Southern Mexico. This was an ideal system because the landscape offers a range of coffee management regimes that maintain heterogeneity in floral resource availability spatially and temporally. We found that the bee community varies significantly between seasons. There were higher abundances of native social, solitary and managed honey bees during the dry season when coffee flowers. Additionally, we found that floral resources from groundcover, but not trees, were associated with bee abundance. Further, the temporal scale of the availability of these resources is important, whereby short-term floral resource availability appears particularly important in maintaining high bee abundance at sites with lower seasonal complementarity. We argue that in addition to spatial resource heterogeneity, temporal resource heterogeneity is critical in explaining bee community patterns, and should thus be considered to promote pollinator conservation.
不同空间尺度上的蜜蜂丰度和多样性模式已经受到了深入的研究关注。然而，短期和长期资源可利用性对生物多样性的影响却较少被探索。对于热带农业系统中的传粉者来说，这一点非常重要，因为许多传粉者的觅食期超过了任何单一作物物种的花期。在这项研究中，我们试图了解热带农业生态系统中的蜜蜂群落如何随季节变化，以及短期和长期的花卉资源可利用性是否影响它们的多样性和丰度。我们使用了一个阈值分析方法来探索两个时间尺度上的这种关系。本研究在墨西哥南部以咖啡农业生态系统为主的地区进行。这是一个理想的系统，因为该景观提供了一系列咖啡管理模式，在空间和时间上保持了花卉资源可利用性的异质性。我们发现，蜜蜂群落在季节之间有显著的变化。在咖啡开花的旱季，本地社会性、独居性和管理性蜜蜂的数量较多。此外，我们发现，地被植物的花卉资源，而不是树木的花卉资源，与蜜蜂的丰度有关。此外，这些资源的可利用时间尺度也很重要，短期的花卉资源可利用性似乎在维持低季节性互补性地区的高蜜蜂丰度方面特别重要。我们认为，除了空间资源异质性外，时间资源异质性对于解释蜜蜂群落模式至关重要，因此应该考虑利用时间资源异质性来促进传粉者保护。
