Determinants of spatial distribution in a bee community: nesting resources, flower resources, and body size

Understanding biodiversity distribution is a primary goal of community ecology. At a landscape scale, bee communities are affected by habitat composition, anthropogenic land use, and fragmentation. However, little information is available on local-scale spatial distribution of bee communities within...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2014-05, Vol.9 (5), p.e97255-e97255
Main Authors: Torné-Noguera, Anna, Rodrigo, Anselm, Arnan, Xavier, Osorio, Sergio, Barril-Graells, Helena, da Rocha-Filho, Léo Correia, Bosch, Jordi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Animal Distribution - physiology
Animals
Anthropogenic factors
Bees
Bees - physiology
Biodiversity
Biology and Life Sciences
Body size
Body Size - physiology
Cluster Analysis
Communities
Community
Conditioning
Ecology
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Ecosystem
Environmental conditions
Flowers - physiology
Foraging habitats
Geography
Habitats
Human influences
Hymenoptera
Land use
Nesting
Nesting Behavior - physiology
Osmia cornuta
Plant reproduction
Pollination
Pollinators
Resource availability
Spain
Spatial distribution
Spatial heterogeneity
Spatial variability
Species Specificity
Studies
Substrates
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Understanding biodiversity distribution is a primary goal of community ecology. At a landscape scale, bee communities are affected by habitat composition, anthropogenic land use, and fragmentation. However, little information is available on local-scale spatial distribution of bee communities within habitats that are uniform at the landscape scale. We studied a bee community along with floral and nesting resources over a 32 km2 area of uninterrupted Mediterranean scrubland. Our objectives were (i) to analyze floral and nesting resource composition at the habitat scale. We ask whether these resources follow a geographical pattern across the scrubland at bee-foraging relevant distances; (ii) to analyze the distribution of bee composition across the scrubland. Bees being highly mobile organisms, we ask whether bee composition shows a homogeneous distribution or else varies spatially. If so, we ask whether this variation is irregular or follows a geographical pattern and whether bees respond primarily to flower or to nesting resources; and (iii) to establish whether body size influences the response to local resource availability and ultimately spatial distribution. We obtained 6580 specimens belonging to 98 species. Despite bee mobility and the absence of environmental barriers, our bee community shows a clear geographical pattern. This pattern is mostly attributable to heterogeneous distribution of small (
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0097255