Guaraci Duran Cordeiro

Aim: Stingless bees are the most species‐rich group of eusocial bees, predominantly found in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. However, despite their diversity and importance, significant gaps remain in our understanding of their distribution patterns and the factors driving them, as these aspects have yet to be thoroughly investigated on a global scale. In this study, we aimed to fill this gap by mapping global habitat suitability for stingless bees. Location: Global. Taxon: Stingless bees (Apidae:Apinae:Meliponini). Method: We compiled over half a million spatiotemporal occurrence records from 361 species of stingless bees at an unprecedented scale from both public and private databases optimised using a recently published data‐cleaning workflow. Through a species distribution model approach, we assessed the relationship between stingless bee distribution, diversity, and environmental factors, ultimately characterising their ecological niche and producing the first habitat suitability maps for the bee tribe Meliponini. Results: Our results reveal significant discrepancies in occurrence records across the Neotropical, the Afrotropical, and the Indo‐Malayan, Papuasian, and Australian regions, as well as among taxa. Habitat suitability hotspots were identified in tropical forests and were associated with relatively high temperatures and humidity throughout the year. Projection maps further suggested that some temperate, xeric, and savannah regions could also be suitable habitats for stingless bees. Our results rescale the known environmental niche of stingless bees, demonstrating that suitable habitats exist well beyond the tropical and subtropical boundaries typically described in the literature. Main Conclusion: This study presents a novel, model‐based assessment of stingless bee distribution, revealing that it extends beyond tropical forests into drier, colder, and temperate regions more broadly than previously recognised. These findings highlight substantial gaps in ecological and distributional data, emphasising the need for taxonomic revision, targeted fieldwork, digitisation of collections, and foundational research on stingless bee ecology and evolution. Addressing these gaps will improve predictions of species responses to environmental change, inform conservation strategies, and advance understanding of stingless bees as essential providers of ecosystem services.

Bees are essential for ecosystem functioning, pollinating many wild and crop plant species. Predicting which species are most vulnerable to global changes, and how their loss may impact ecosystems and human well-being, is critical. Comprehensive information on bee response and effect traits is fundamental to these assessments. However, the Raunkiærian shortfall—insufficient trait data—remains significant for bees, particularly in the Neotropics. Moreover, it remains uncertain whether conservation strategies based on functional diversity from temperate regions can be generalized to the Neotropics. To address this gap, we compiled a comprehensive and validated dataset on Brazilian bee traits, covering 24 traits related to sociality (100% of the species with some information), nesting (88%), body size (71%), and buzzing capacity (42%) on 2,066 Brazilian bee species. The trait data here presented is a crucial resource for evaluating bee species' pollination effectiveness and susceptibility to global change. Comparative analysis with regions with ample trait data—USA, Europe, and China—revealed notable differences. Brazilian bees exhibited a higher prevalence of aboveground nesting species, especially compared to Europe. The proportion of eusocial species was also greater than in Europe and the United States, and more similar to China. Differently from other regions, Brazilian eusocial bees were significantly smaller than their non-eusocial counterparts. These cross-regional comparisons highlight the importance of geographically tailored conservation strategies and underscore the need for extensive trait data to accurately predict regional vulnerabilities and ecological impacts in a rapidly changing world.

Spondias species are increasingly valued for their fruit production, which relies heavily on insect pollination. The flowers of these species are generalised, attracting a diverse array of insect visitors, including bees, beetles, flies, wasps and butterflies. This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of floral scents emitted by three Spondias crop species—Spondias mombin (cajá), S. purpurea (siriguela) and S. tuberosa (umbu) and explores the potential relationships between floral cues and pollinator spectra. We examine the spectrum of floral visitors across these species from both literature and original field observations. Our results reveal significant interspecific differences in both the number and quantity of volatile compounds released, as well as in the relative composition of these scents. Cajá flowers were dominated by (E)‐β‐ocimene, α‐ and β‐pinene, methyl benzoate and benzyl alcohol, whereas siriguela flowers primarily emitted (E)‐β‐caryophyllene, (E)‐4,8‐dimethyl‐1,3,7‐nonatriene, α‐pinene, hexyl butyrate, methoxybenzene and 4‐methylanisol. Umbu flowers predominantly emitted linalool and its derivatives, and (Z)‐3‐hexenyl butyrate. The floral visitor composition varied between species. Bees, particularly from the Meliponini tribe, were the main visitors of cajá (70%), whereas siriguela attracted primarily wasps (80%), especially from the Epiponini tribe. Umbu flowers attracted in similar proportions both wasps (38%) and bees (32%). These findings highlight the importance of a broad range of insect pollinators in Spondias species, particularly the role of non‐bee pollinators like social wasps in the pollination of siriguela and umbu. We propose that variations in floral scent profiles and visual cues among these species are key factors in shaping their specific pollinator communities. This underscores the critical role of diverse insect pollinators in maintaining ecosystem services, reinforcing the need to preserve and support their populations.

Background: Global warming is expected to impact the chemical communication between flowering plants and their pollinators. Surprisingly, it is unknown whether and how temperature-induced changes in scent emission affect pollinator behavior. Strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) is a plant primarily pollinated by bees and hoverflies, with the former group being particularly attracted to the floral scent they emit. Results: Using chemical analytical, electrophysiological, and behavioral approaches we tested whether temperature-induced shifts in floral scent of strawberry affect chemical communication with its main bee pollinators (Apis mellifera, Bombus terrestris, Osmia bicornis). While strawberry flowers in the optimum scenario released 10.4 ng/flower/hour, mainly p-anisaldehyde (81%) and seven other scent compounds, in the warmer scenario, the flowers did not emit any detectable scent. In the behavioral experiments, the pollinators were attracted by the scents of the optimum scenario. Conclusions: We predict that the absence of detectable scent emissions from strawberry plants grown under heat stress will reduce the attractiveness of the flowers to the bee pollinators. Our study raises important ecological and agricultural questions, as decreased attractiveness of flowers to pollinators might potentially lead to insufficient bee pollination, with potential negative consequences for ecosystem functioning and crop yields, particularly in regions reliant on bees as primary pollinators. Given that our study centered on bee pollinators, it is needed to conduct further research to evaluate the impact on hoverflies.

Many wild plants and crops are pollinated by insects, which often use floral scents to locate their host plants. The production and emission of floral scents are temperature-dependent; however, little is known about how global warming affects scent emissions and the attraction of pollinators. We used a combination of chemical analytical and electrophysiological approaches to quantify the influence of a global warming scenario (+5 °C in this century) on the floral scent emissions of two important crop species, i.e., buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) and oilseed rape (Brassica napus), and to test whether compounds that are potentially different between the treatments can be detected by their bee pollinators (Apis mellifera and Bombus terrestris). We found that only buckwheat was affected by increased temperatures. Independent of temperature, the scent of oilseed rape was dominated by p-anisaldehyde and linalool, with no differences in relative scent composition and the total amount of scent. Buckwheat emitted 2.4 ng of scent per flower and hour at optimal temperatures, dominated by 2- and 3-methylbutanoic acid (46%) and linalool (10%), and at warmer temperatures threefold less scent (0.7 ng/flower/hour), with increased contributions of 2- and 3-methylbutanoic acid (73%) to the total scent and linalool and other compounds being absent. The antennae of the pollinators responded to various buckwheat floral scent compounds, among them compounds that disappeared at increased temperatures or were affected in their (relative) amounts. Our results highlight that increased temperatures differentially affect floral scent emissions of crop plants and that, in buckwheat, the temperature-induced changes in floral scent emissions affect the olfactory perception of the flowers by bees. Future studies should test whether these differences in olfactory perception translate into different attractiveness of buckwheat flowers to bees.

Encounters between flowers and invertebrates are key events for the functioning of tropical forests. Assessing the structure of networks composed of the interactions between those partners leads to a better understanding of ecosystem functioning and the effects of environmental factors on ecological processes. Gathering such data is, however, costly and time‐consuming, especially in the highly diverse tropics. We aimed to provide a comprehensive repository of available flower–invertebrate interaction information for the Atlantic Forest, a South American tropical forest domain. Data were obtained from published works and “gray literature,” such as theses and dissertations, as well as self‐reports by co‐authors. The data set has ~18,000 interaction records forming 482 networks, each containing between one and 1061 interaction links. Each network was sampled for about 200 h or less, with few exceptions. A total of 641 plant genera within 136 different families and 39 orders were reported, with the most abundant and rich families being Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Rubiaceae. Invertebrates interacting with these plants were all arthropods from 10 orders, 129 families, and 581 genera, comprising 2419 morphotypes (including 988 named species). Hymenoptera was the most abundant and diverse order, with at least six times more records than the second‐ranked order (Lepidoptera). The complete data set shows Hymenoptera interacting with all plant orders and also shows Diptera, Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Hemiptera to be important nodes. Among plants, Asterales and Fabales had the highest number of interactions. The best sampled environment was forest (~8000 records), followed by pastures and crops. Savanna, grasslands, and urban environments (among others) were also reported, indicating a wide range of approaches dedicated to collecting flower–invertebrate interaction data in the Atlantic Forest domain. Nevertheless, most reported data were from forest understory or lower strata, indicating a knowledge gap about flower–invertebrate interactions at the canopy. Also, access to remote regions remains a limitation, generating sampling bias across the geographical range of the Atlantic Forest. Future studies in these continuous and hard‐to‐access forested areas will yield important new information regarding the interactions between flowers and invertebrates in the Atlantic Forest. There are no copyright restrictions on the data set. Please cite this data paper if the data are used in publications and teaching events.