Social wasps fauna (Vespidae) of semideciduous seasonal forest in southern Brazil

Abstract

Social wasps are insects that perform numerous environmental services, with emphasis on pollination and predation of agricultural pests. However, despite the increase in efforts to know the social wasps geographical distribution and richness, there are still many areas and ecosystems with few studies of this nature, such as the Paraná State, Southern Brazil. To collaborate with these efforts, this work aimed to carry out an inventory of social wasps in semideciduous forest in the Ilha Grande National Park, an integral conservation unit in the Paraná State. The Sampling took place from February to November 2019, totalizing 15 days and 60 hours, being carried out on six islands of the Paraná River, using the active search for species and colonies records. Fourteen species were registered, distributed in six genera. The study revealed a low species richness, which may be related to the area's usage history, as well as to other factors. This highlights the need for greater sampling efforts in other areas of this conservation unit.

Amostragem rápida da fauna de vespas sociais (Hymenoptera, Vespidae) em ecótono de Mata Atlântica e Cerrado, associado a área de mineração

“…Although the sampled area is inserted in a mining environment, being therefore subjected to a strong anthropogenic pressure, the wasp richness was expressive compared with that observed in other studies in a similar vegetation physiognomy (Souza, Pires, Silva-Filho, & Ladeira, 2015;Silva et al, 2021). This finding demonstrates the importance of conserving remnant forest fragments for the maintenance of these insect populations, as discussed by other authors (Graça & Somavilla, 2018) Alteration of the area can negatively affect social wasp communities, in particular that of P. smithii (Figure 2), which is considered rare.…”

“…Since the beginning of the 21st century, increasing efforts have been made to survey the social wasp fauna of Minas Gerais State (Barbosa, Detoni, Maciel, & Prezoto, 2016) in the Cerrado (Simões, Cuozzo, & Friero-Costa, 2012), Atlantic Forest (Albulquerque, Souza, & Clemente, 2015), Rupestrian Grasslands and High-Altitude Grasslands (Oliveira, Souza, Clemente & Vieira, 2021), transition regions between the Cerrado and Caatinga (Brunismann, Souza, Pires, Coelho, & Milani, 2016), and even in agricultural and urbanized areas (Aud, Carvalho, Clemente, & Prezoto, 2010; Milani, Jacques, Clemente, Coelho, &…”

“…This finding demonstrates the importance of conserving remnant forest fragments for the maintenance of these insect populations, as discussed by other authors (Graça & Somavilla, 2018) Alteration of the area can negatively affect social wasp communities, in particular that of P. smithii (Figure 2), which is considered rare. There is only one record of the 104 species in the state, in the Pandeiros River Wildlife Refuge, a dry forest area within a transition zone between Cerrado and Caatinga, northern Minas Gerais State (Brunismann et al, 2016;Francisco, Souza, Clemente, & Brunismann, 2018). Several authors, such as Cabacinha, Pereira, Cordeiro, Fonseca, and Araújo Júnior, (2021), have shown that transition regions between the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest harbor a unique plant community.…”

Community of social wasps (Hymenoptera, Vespidae) in Atlantic Forest remnants in the Western of the state of Paraná, Southern Brazil

“…This family includes six subfamilies, three of solitary or pre-social habit, and three that exhibit eusocial behavior, and Brazil only has Polinistinae (CARPENTER, 1993). Despite the growing effort to know the Brazilian wasp fauna, some Brazilian states are "undersampled," such as Paraná, which has only three studies on its wasp fauna, until this study, based on information obtained in biological collections (RICHARDS, 1978) and studies in specific areas, such as in the municipality of Cascavel (RIBEIRO, 2010) and at the Ilha Grande National Park (SILVA et al, 2021).…”

Seasonal and interannual variation on social wasps’ assemblages in two habitats of a seasonally dry tropical forest region

“…For example, little information is reported for Brazilian biomes with marked seasonality in rainfall, such as the Caatinga (Dos Santos et al, 2020) and Cerrado (Diniz & Kitayama, 1998; Souza et al, 2014). Our knowledge about social wasps seasonality is limited to biomes with slight variation between seasons, such as the Atlantic Forest (Locher et al, 2014) and the transition zone between Caatinga and Cerrado with areas of mesic forest (Brunismann et al, 2016) and agrosystems (Auad et al, 2010; Klein et al, 2015). Specifically, the ecology of social wasp communities in the Caatinga biome is a critical information gap.…”