The effect of habitat fragmentation on the bee visitor assemblages of three Australian tropical rainforest tree species

• Published in: Ecology and evolution Vol. 8; no. 16; pp. 8204 - 8216
• Main Authors: Smith, Tobias J., Mayfield, Margaret M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.08.2018; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Apoidea; Bees; Biodiversity; Flowers; Forests; Fragmentation; Fragments; functional traits; Habitat fragmentation; Landscape; Original Research; Pollinators; Rainforests; Regeneration; Rural areas; Species; Species diversity; Taxonomy; Tetragonula; Trees; Tropical environment; Tropical environments; tropical forest; Tropical forests; Queensland Australia; Australia; tropical forest; Tetragonula; Apoidea; functional traits
• ISSN: 2045-7758; 2045-7758
• DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4339

Tropical forest loss and fragmentation can change bee community dynamics and potentially interrupt plant–pollinator relationships. While bee community responses to forest fragmentation have been investigated in a number of tropical regions, no studies have focused on this topic in Australia. In this study, we examine taxonomic and functional diversity of bees visiting flowers of three tree species across small and large rainforest fragments in Australian tropical landscapes. We found lower taxonomic diversity of bees visiting flowers of trees in small rainforest fragments compared with large forest fragments and show that bee species in small fragments were subsets of species in larger fragments. Bees visiting trees in small fragments also had higher mean body sizes than those in larger fragments, suggesting that small‐sized bees may be less likely to persist in small fragments. Lastly, we found reductions in the abundance of eusocial stingless bees visiting flowers in small fragments compared to large fragments. These results suggest that pollinator visits to native trees living in small tropical forest remnants may be reduced, which may in turn impact on a range of processes, potentially including forest regeneration and diversity maintenance in small forest remnants in Australian tropical countryside landscapes. Here, we focus on bee visitor assemblages of three rainforest tree species in small and large forest fragments in the Australian wet tropics. We found that bee diversity was taxonomically and functionally different between large and small fragments. Our results have implications for long‐term forest dynamics of rainforest remnants in the tropics.