Efeito do fogo sobre as interações entre Apis mellifera e seus recursos florais em capões no Pantanal Sul

Abstract

Fire is a major modifier of the landscape and can affect the communities of pollinators and the plants they use as resources. The time since the last fire event can lead to different communities, as areas more recently affected by this disturbance are likely to have more simplified communities. The analysis of pollinator-plant interactions can be carried out focusing on the pollinators, assessing the pollen load they carry (zoocentric), or on the plants, based on the frequency of recorded visits (phytocentric). The exotic bee Apis mellifera is one of the most frequent floral visitors in the Pantanal, playing a central role in interaction networks. In this study, we evaluated the species richness of plants visited, and pollen grains carried by A. mellifera in 18 forest fragments (capões) with different fire histories (recent, intermediate, and late fire), the similarity in the species composition used by this bee across these fragments, and the centrality of plant species in the interaction networks with A. mellifera. The fire history does not appear to affect the resource use by Apis mellifera, as the richness of species used is similar across capões from different treatments, and the similarity of resources used between capões was low, being affected only by the distance between areas, but not by fire history. The fact that we recorded some interactions only through one of the study approaches (phytocentric or zoocentric) highlights the importance of using both methods for a better understanding of pollinator-plant relations.