Determinants of spatial distribution in a bee community: nesting resources, flower resources, and body size.

ABSTRACT: Understanding biodiversity distribution is a primary goal of community ecology. At a landscape scale, bee communities are affected by habitat composition, anthropogenic land use, and fragmentation. However, little information is available on local-scale spatial distribution of bee communities within habitats that are uniform at the landscape scale. We studied a bee community along with floral and nesting resources over a 32 km2 area of uninterrupted Mediterranean scrubland. Our objectives were (i) to analyze floral and nesting resource composition at the habitat scale. We ask whether these resources follow a geographical pattern across the scrubland at bee-foraging relevant distances; (ii) to analyze the distribution of bee composition across the scrubland. Bees being highly mobile organis

SUBMITTER: Torne-Noguera A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4019551 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature