Bee Community Comparison in Northwestern Patagonia (Argentina).

摘要

The main focus of this thesis is to create a bee biodiversity baseline database and investigate variation among four bee communities in Patagonian Argentina (Chubut Province). A total of 24,238 bees were sampled across all sites by sweep netting from spring to fall in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007, representing 50 species from 21 genera caught on 55 flowering plant species. The samples were dominated by a single species: 58% of all individuals caught were Ruizantheda mutabilis. The inclusion or exclusion of this dominant bee had a large influence on almost all biodiversity analyses. Its removal may give a skewed representation of the four sites' communities, but based on all analyses and field observation, it gives a more reasonable view on the relative health and diversity of the communities. Accordingly, site 1 had a greater bee diversity than sites 4, 2, and 3, respectively, reflecting the relative levels of habitat disturbance present at the sites.;Keywords: Bees, Biodiversity, Argentina, Patagonia, Dominance, and Disturbance