Diversity of the Nests of Social Wasps (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Polistinae) in the Northern Pantanal, Brazil

Abstract

Some species of wasps demonstrate plasticity with diverse nesting habits according to the environmental conditions and substrates used for building the nests, while others are restricted to habitats with specific conditions and may exhibit some degree of fide-lity. The aim of this study was to estimate species richness and abundance of nests of Polistini and Epiponini wasps in four landscape units in the Pantanal of Poconé, Retiro Novo Farm, southwestern Mato Grosso state, Brazil. The nests of social wasps were sampled in four plant physiognomies locally known as cambarazal, landizal, pombeiral and campo limpo from August 25, 2011 to April 11, 2012, being recorded 308 nests of eight genera and 14 species of social wasps. The highest number of nests belongs to Polybia ruficeps xanthops (32.69%), Poly. sericea (24.27%) and Synoeca surinama (15.21%). The highest species richness was recorded in cambarazal and the highest abundance of nests in pombeiral, while campo limpo showed the lowest richness and abundance of nests. The nests of S. surinama were associated with cambarazal and landizal (IndVal = 93.3, P = 0.001), while the nests of Poly. ruficeps xanthops and Poly. chrysothorax were associated with cambarazal, landizal and pombeiral (IndVal = 97, P = 0.001). There was lower abundance and lower species richness of wasps in campo limpo. These results demonstrate that the maintenance of forest environments in the Pantanal is essential for the establishment and maintenance of social wasp nests.

Assemblages of Social Wasps (Hymenoptera, Vespidae, Polistinae) in the Veredas of Central Brazil

“…Epiponini species provided more than 70% of the specimens collected in many other Brazilian studies (Diniz & Kitayama, 1998;Carpenter & Marques, 2001;Elpino-Campos et al, 2007;Santos et al, 2009;Silva et al, 2011. However, some Epiponini species (Almeida et al, 2014) were less abundant in our study, with the number of individuals ranging from one to nine, an abundance similar to that recorded by Elpino-Campos et al (2007), Lima et al (2010), Simões et al (2012), and.…”

“…The least abundant species belonged to the tribes Mischocyttarini and Polistini, as observed in previous studies (Diniz & Kitayama, 1994;Souza & Prezoto, 2005;Elpino-Campos et al, 2007;Santos et al, 2009;Simões et al, 2012;Silveira et al, 2008;Silva & Silveira, 2009;Almeida et al, 2014). The reduced abundance of these two tribes was expected, given that their species build nests that contain no more than a few dozen or hundreds of individuals (Carpenter & Marques, 2001: O'Donnell, 2020.…”

“…Given their abundance and ecological importance, social wasps have been and continue to be the subject of ecological studies in different regions and environments (Diniz & Kitayama, 1998;Souza & Prezoto, 2006;Silva et al, 2011;Da Silva et al, 2019;Clemente et al, 2020;Ferreira et al, 2020). In Brazil, these environments include the Cerrado savanna (Souza et al, 2012;Souza et al, 2020;Vicente et al, 2020), Atlantic Forest (Grandinete & Noll, 2013;Togni et al, 2014;Ribeiro et al, 2019;Souza et al, 2021), the semi-arid Northeast (Santos et al, 2020), the Amazon Forest (Silveira, 2002;Silveira et al, 2012;Somavilla & Oliveira, 2017;Graça & Somavilla, 2018;Gomes et al, 2020), and the Pantanal wetlands of Mato Grosso (Almeida et al, 2014). In the most recent study of the social wasps of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, Ferreira et al (2020) recorded 43 species.…”

Diversity and aspects of the ecology of social wasps (Vespidae, Polistinae) in Central Amazonian "terra firme" forest

“…There are some studies on the diversity and density of social wasps in different regions and biomes in Brazil, such as in agroecosystems and anthropogenic environments in the southeast and northeast (e.g., Lima et al 2000;Auad et al 2010), in the savanna (cerrado) in the southeast, midwest and northeast (e.g., Lima et al 2010;Tanaka-Jr. & Noll 2011;Silva et al 2011;Grandinete & Noll 2013), in rocky fields in the southeast and northeast (e.g., Silva-Pereira & Santos 2006;, in the "Pantanal" biome (Almeida et al 2014) and several environments in the Atlantic rainforest in the southeast and south (e.g. Somavilla et al 2010;Tanaka-Jr & Noll 2011;Locher et al 2014;Togni et al 2014).…”

A Technique for Transferring Nests of Polybia (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Epiponini) Wasps in Anthropized Environment

“…An important factor that must be considered is the type of environment where the nest is located and the new area where the nest will be placed because each species has different preferences for substrate or feeding habits (Cruz et al, 2006;Santos et al, 2007;Almeida et al, 2014;da Silva et al, 2019;Barbosa et al, 2020Barbosa et al, , 2021. These features can directly affect the success of the colony (Dejeanet al, 1998;Santos et al, 2007).…”