Padrões de variação de tamanho corporal entre espécies de abelhas nativas do Estado do Ceará: distância intertegular como medida comparativa

Abstract

Bees (Apoidea) are hymenopteran insects with a large diversity of species of importance for maintenance of ecosystems and strong economical relevance for humans as they are the largest group of pollinators of angiosperm plants, crucial in biodiversity maintanance and food production. Entomological collections store a large amount of taxonomic, ecological and evolutionary data on the animal specimens housed, if properly maintained. The UFC’s Bee Sector entomological collection houses species fom all over the state of Ceará, with relevant data on the ecology and evolution of the group in the region. One of the most relevant data about the life history of a animal species its the size of the individuals. One way to facilitate and streamline the measurement process is to use allometric measures, in which a scaled comparison can be made between individuals of a same group. For bees, the intertegular span is one of the most used allometric measures. The presente work carried out a sampling of five species of social bees of the Meliponini tribe (Hymenoptera:Apidae:Apinae) and five species of solitary bees of the Euglossini, Xylocopini and Emphorini tribes (Hymenoptera:Apidae) found in the UFC’s Bee Sector collection. The intertegular span of the selected specimens was measured in order to compare the percentual variation of the selected species size’s, intending to verify if there is a correlation between the median size of the species and how much individuals can vary from each other in nature, in addition to compare the tendencies of this variation between eussocial and solitary species. The results of the study have shown that while the species of solitary bee’s intertegular distance did have a greater variance, there is no strong correlation between the species median size and size variation between individuals of the utilized bees species ; it is probable that the difference in provisioning between nests in solitary bees species is responsible for this occurrence.