Assunção Rafaela M, Souza Luan S, Camargo Nícholas F, Aguiar Antonio J C, Sujii Edison R, Pires Carmen S S, Togni Pedro H B
Programa de Pós-Graduação Em Ecologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Univ de Brasília (UnB), Brasília, DF, Brazil.
Depto de Ecologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Univ de Brasília (UnB), Brasília, DF, Brazil.
Neotrop Entomol. 2025 Jan 29;54(1):32. doi: 10.1007/s13744-025-01247-9.
Land-use changes have led to natural habitat loss and fragmentation, favoring the occurrence of dominant bee species in agroecosystems. This has raised concerns on the dominance effects in pollination-dependent crops like passion fruits (Passiflora edulis Sims) in tropical regions. That is because dominant bee species might overlap their foraging time with regular pollinators, potentially impairing crop yield. Our aim was to understand how dominant small bees affect regular pollinators of passion fruit flowers and its implications on crop production for smallholder farmers. We sampled bees on farms cropping yellow passion fruits in the Cerrado, the Brazilian savanna, and established pollination exclusion experiments to evaluate the interacting effects of dominance and bee community composition on crop yield. We observed a low frequency of regular pollinators, while dominant floral visitors were highly abundant. Dominant pollinators highly overlapped their foraging activity with regular pollinators through time. Contrary to our expectations, the dominance of native and non-native bee species did not directly affect the occurrence of regular pollinators nor crop yield. However, we found evidence that exploitative competition may indirectly affect pollination by regular pollinators. Manual and bee pollination combined increased fruit quality, highlighting the potential benefits of diverse pollinator communities for sustainable crop production. Our findings emphasize the need for strategies that can improve the quality and abundance of resources in agroecosystems for regular native pollinators to optimize pollination in passion fruits on smallholder farms and reduce dominance effects caused by small floral-visiting bees.
土地利用变化导致了自然栖息地的丧失和破碎化，这有利于农业生态系统中优势蜂种的出现。这引发了人们对热带地区依赖授粉的作物（如西番莲（Passiflora edulis Sims））中优势效应的担忧。这是因为优势蜂种可能会使其觅食时间与常规传粉者的觅食时间重叠，从而可能损害作物产量。我们的目的是了解优势小型蜜蜂如何影响西番莲花的常规传粉者，以及这对小农户作物生产的影响。我们在巴西热带稀树草原塞拉多种植黄色西番莲的农场对蜜蜂进行了采样，并开展了授粉排除实验，以评估优势度和蜜蜂群落组成对作物产量的相互作用影响。我们观察到常规传粉者的出现频率较低，而优势访花者数量众多。优势传粉者的觅食活动在时间上与常规传粉者高度重叠。与我们的预期相反，本地和非本地蜂种的优势度并未直接影响常规传粉者的出现或作物产量。然而，我们发现有证据表明，剥削性竞争可能会间接影响常规传粉者的授粉。人工授粉和蜜蜂授粉相结合提高了果实品质，突出了多样化传粉者群落对可持续作物生产的潜在益处。我们的研究结果强调，需要采取策略来提高农业生态系统中常规本地传粉者的资源质量和数量，以优化小农户农场中西番莲的授粉，并减少小型访花蜜蜂造成的优势效应。
