This work analyses the pollen stored by Meliponini bees whose nests were sampled along the Rio Negro channel, Amazonas, Brazil, during the final phase of the rainy season, which is also the time of pollen scarcity. From a total of 51 samples studied, 78 pollen types were identified, of which 39 were determined to species level. The pollen types were from 70 genera and 42 families. Based on the pollen records, a clustering analysis was performed, as well as the calculation of the trophic overlap index. The study demonstrates that the plants used by the bees do not depend on them for pollination in most cases; it rather suggests scarcity of pollen resources from the plants adapted to the pollination of Meliponini, and emphasises the ability of such bees to switch to new available resources. This work indicates a list of important plants for meliponiculture suitable for cultures near meliponaries.

Land use change threatens global biodiversity and compromises ecosystem functions, including pollination and food production. Reduced taxonomic α‐diversity is often reported under land use change, yet the impacts could be different at larger spatial scales (i.e., γ‐diversity), either due to reduced β‐diversity amplifying diversity loss or increased β‐diversity dampening diversity loss. Additionally, studies often focus on taxonomic diversity, while other important biodiversity components, including phylogenetic diversity, can exhibit differential responses. Here, we evaluated how agricultural and urban land use alters the taxonomic and phylogenetic α‐, β‐, and γ‐diversity of an important pollinator taxon—bees. Using a multicontinental dataset of 3117 bee assemblages from 157 studies, we found that taxonomic α‐diversity was reduced by 16%–18% in both agricultural and urban habitats relative to natural habitats. Phylogenetic α‐diversity was decreased by 11%–12% in agricultural and urban habitats. Compared with natural habitats, taxonomic and phylogenetic β‐diversity increased by 11% and 6% in urban habitats, respectively, but exhibited no systematic change in agricultural habitats. We detected a 22% decline in taxonomic γ‐diversity and a 17% decline in phylogenetic γ‐diversity in agricultural habitats, but γ‐diversity of urban habitats was not significantly different from natural habitats. These findings highlight the threat of agricultural expansions to large‐scale bee diversity due to systematic γ‐diversity decline. In addition, while both urbanization and agriculture lead to consistent declines in α‐diversity, their impacts on β‐ or γ‐diversity vary, highlighting the need to study the effects of land use change at multiple scales.

Background: Animal pollination is an important ecosystem function and service, ensuring both the integrity of natural systems and human well-being. Although many knowledge shortfalls remain, some high-quality data sets on biological interactions are now available. The development and adoption of standards for biodiversity data and metadata has promoted great advances in biological data sharing and aggregation, supporting large-scale studies and science-based public policies. However, these standards are currently not suitable to fully support interaction data sharing. Results: Here we present a vocabulary of terms and a data model for sharing plant–pollinator interactions data based on the Darwin Core standard. The vocabulary introduces 48 new terms targeting several aspects of plant–pollinator interactions and can be used to capture information from different approaches and scales. Additionally, we provide solutions for data serialization using RDF, XML, and DwC-Archives and recommendations of existing controlled vocabularies for some of the terms. Our contribution supports open access to standardized data on plant–pollinator interactions. Conclusions: The adoption of the vocabulary would facilitate data sharing to support studies ranging from the spatial and temporal distribution of interactions to the taxonomic, phenological, functional, and phylogenetic aspects of plant–pollinator interactions. We expect to fill data and knowledge gaps, thus further enabling scientific research on the ecology and evolution of plant–pollinator communities, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and the development of public policies. The proposed data model is flexible and can be adapted for sharing other types of interactions data by developing discipline-specific vocabularies of terms.

Urbanization has reshaped the distribution of biodiversity on Earth, but we are only beginning to understand its effects on ecological communities. While urbanization may have homogenization effects strong enough to blur the large-scale patterns in interaction networks, urban community patterns may still be associated with climate gradients reflecting large-scale biogeographical processes. Using 103 hummingbird–plant mutualistic networks across continental Americas, including 176 hummingbird and 1,180 plant species, we asked how urbanization affects species interactions over large climate gradients. Urban networks were more generalized, exhibiting greater interaction overlap. Higher generalization was also associated with lower precipitation in both urban and natural areas, indicating that climate affects networks irrespective of habitat type. Urban habitats also showed lower hummingbird functional trait diversity and over/underrepresentation of specific clades. From the plant side, urban communities had a higher prevalence of nonnative nectar plants, which were more frequently visited by the hummingbird species occurring in both urban and natural areas. Therefore, urbanization affected hummingbird–plant interactions through both the composition of species and traits, as well as floral resource availability. Taken together, we show that urbanization consistently modifies ecological communities and their interactions, but climate still plays a role in affecting the structure of these novel communities over the scale of continents.

In recent decades, droughts, deforestation and wildfires have become recurring phenomena that have heavily affected both human activities and natural ecosystems in Amazonia. The time needed for an ecosystem to recover from carbon losses is a crucial metric to evaluate disturbance impacts on forests. However, little is known about the impacts of these disturbances, alone and synergistically, on forest recovery time and the resulting spatiotemporal patterns at the regional scale. In this study, we combined the 3-PG forest growth model, remote sensing and field derived equations, to map the Amazonia-wide (3 km of spatial resolution) impact and recovery time of aboveground biomass (AGB) after drought, fire and a combination of logging and fire. Our results indicate that AGB decreases by 4%, 19% and 46% in forests affected by drought, fire and logging + fire, respectively, with an average AGB recovery time of 27 years for drought, 44 years for burned and 63 years for logged + burned areas and with maximum values reaching 184 years in areas of high fire intensity. Our findings provide two major insights in the spatial and temporal patterns of drought and wildfire in the Amazon: (1) the recovery time of the forests takes longer in the southeastern part of the basin, and, (2) as droughts and wildfires become more frequent—since the intervals between the disturbances are getting shorter than the rate of forest regeneration—the long lasting damage they cause potentially results in a permanent and increasing carbon losses from these fragile ecosystems.