BIODIVERSIDADE, DISTRIBUIÇÃO ESPACIAL E INTERAÇÕES ECOLÓGICAS DE MELIPONÍNEOS (HYMENOPTERA, APOIDEA) EM PARQUES URBANOS DE GOIÂNIA GOIÁS, REGIÃO CENTROOESTE

Abstract

This study was accomplished in six urban parks (Flamboyant, Areião, Bosque dos Buritis, Mutirama, Botafogo and Vaca Brava) of Goiânia city, Goiás State. Two questions intend to be answered: i) are the Meliponini community similar in the parks urban sampled? ii) which among the considered environmental variables (two physiochemical: air temperature, air relative humidity of the air; two related to the beehives: type of used substrate and location in the arboreal stratum) influence the Meliponini assemblages? Two samplings were accomplished in each park being one in the low waters period (August 2008) and other in the high waters (November 2008). In each park, they were delimited ten transects of 100x20m, where the visual location of beehives was accomplished, collected the biological material and measured the environmental variables. It was collected 11 species of Meliponini. The most abundant species were Nannotrigona testaceicornis (24% of total abundance), Tetragonisca angustula (21%) and Scaptotrigona postica (19%). The Bosque dos Buritis Park displayed elevated richness values (9) and specific number of species (NEE = 2.4), whereas the Areião and Vaca Brava parks presented the lowest richness and NEE values (1.9 and 1.6, respectively). The analysis of Morisita-Horn indicates that the Meliponini community of the Areião Park are similar to these of the other parks sampled, except Mutirama Park. The result of the co-inertia analysis performed considering the Meliponini community and the substrate was significant (p = 0.007; 99.04% of the total inertia explained). The substrate preferred by Meliponini for the construction of beehives is trees of the Leguminosae and Apocynaceae family. Preference is observed by hollow spaces of trees, as well as for heights < 5 m for internal beehives and between 15 to 20 m for external ones. The natural conditions allied to anthropogenic activities seem to influence the composition and structure of Meliponini community.