Check List 11(1): e19128, doi: 10.15560/11.1.1530
The social wasp community (Hymenoptera, Vespidae) and new distribution record of Polybia ruficeps in an area of Caatinga Biome, northeastern Brazil
expand article infoAndré Carneiro Melo‡, Bruno Corrêa Barbosa‡, Mariana Monteiro de Castro‡, Gilberto Marcos de Mendonça Santos§, Fábio Prezoto‡
‡ Laboratório de Ecologia Comportamental e Bioacústica da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil§ Laboratório de Entomologia da Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, Brazil

Corresponding author: Mariana Castro ( marimc.jf@gmail.com )

© 2017 André Melo, Bruno Barbosa, Mariana Castro, Gilberto Santos, Fábio Prezoto.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Castro M, Santos G, Barbosa B, Melo A, Prezoto F (2015) The social wasp community (Hymenoptera, Vespidae) and new distribution record of Polybia ruficeps in an area of Caatinga Biome, northeastern Brazil. Check List 11(1): 1530. https://doi.org/10.15560/11.1.1530
Open Access
Abstract
Social wasps are broadly distributed in Brazil, and their distribution is closely related to local plant composition. However, only a few studies on the diversity of these insects have been carried out in northeastern Brazil, and in Caatinga Biome the diversity is probably underestimated due to the lack of inventories for the region. Aiming at advancing the knowledge about the wasp fauna, we carried out this study from October 2005 to September 2006 in Ibipeba, northeastern Brazil. We collected 172 wasps of five genera and eight species, and recorded Polybia ruficeps Schrottky, 1902 for the first time in the state of Bahia. The most abundant species was Polybia ignobilis (Haliday, 1836) (n = 69), and the least abundant were Brachygastra lecheguana (Latreille, 1824) (n = 2) and Polistes canadensis (Linnaeus, 1758) (n = 2). The present study inventory focused exclusively on the diversity of social wasps in an area of Caatinga, which contributes to advance the local fauna knowledge.
Keywords
diversity; semi-arid; wasp fauna