RESPOSTA DE ABELHAS A CENÁRIOS FUTUROS DE MUDANÇAS CLIMÁTICAS UTILIZANDO MODELOS DE NICHO ECOLÓGICO

Abstract

Pollinators, especially bees, are threatened by environmental degradation, demanding effective strategies and public policies to protect them from the ongoing decline. Global changes such as loss of habitat, invasion of exotic species and climate change have been suggested as the main causes of this decline. Above all, climate change is of greater concern in the scientific world, since climate is the primary control of species distribution and ecological processes. Thus, understanding how bees respond to future climate change can show us how ecosystem services can change, with consequences for both agriculture, ecosystem functioning, and the economic activity involved in pollination. In chapter one entitled "Integrating biotic predictors into niche models: response of an exotic species in South America climate change", we evaluated the effect of inclusion of biotic components, the predictive variables derived from potential plant distributions, upon the potential distribution of the exotic bee Lithurgus huberi Ducke (1907) in South America. Our results showed that the inclusion of the biotic component partially improved our model and that of L. huberi. Besides, the bee’s distribution tends to decrease in the future, regardless of the scenario considered, but especially in the most pessimistic one. Our main objective in the second chapter, entitled "Climate change will contract the distribution range of Neotropical carpenter bees", was to assess the effects of global climate change on future distribution by underlying areas of environmental protection for Xylocopa abbreviata Hurd & Moure (1963), Xylocopa truxali Hurd & Moure (1963), and Xylocopa vestita Hurd & Moure (1963) in South America. Our results showed a significant reduction of the future distribution area of all Xylocopa species evaluated as e well in protected areas