Características estruturais da guilda de antófilo diurnos em um remanescente de caatinga em Santana do Seridó, Rio Grande do Norte.

Abstract

The present study aimed to characterize the diversity, abundance and variation in the daily cycle of activity of flower visitors in a firagment of semi arid savanna in Rio Grande do Norte. The guild of floral visitors was studied by means of systematic sampling of individuais with flowers or flight along six transects with entomological nets. The floral visitors were sampled monthly between November 2009 and October 2011, during a day of each month, 5:30 to 16:30 o’ clock with an hour break every hour of sampling. The fauna of flower visitors sampled was composed of four groups of insects and a bird. A total of 2.720 individuais representing 175 species were recorded. The order Hymenoptera was the richest in species (95 spp), followed by Diptera (39 spp) and Lepidoptera (34 spp). The order Hymenoptera was the most abundant (n= 1.891), followed by Lepidoptera (n= 662) and Diptera (n= 131). The fragment of caatinga studied showed a lot of rare species of flower visitors and only one species was dominant, Apis mellifera L. (Hymenoptera). The alpha diversity of floral visitors using Shannon-Weaver was estimated at 2.68 nats.ind.- 1. Eighty-three plant species were recorded with flowers available to visitors throughout the study period, however, only sixty species, distributed in 21 botanical families were visited by anthophilous during the study period. Families who received the highest number of visits to flowers were Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Malvaceae and Combretaceae. Between 9:30 and 10:30 was sampled at the highest species richness and higher number of individuais at work, being recorded only species collected in the first two times studied, indicating its inclusion in fiiture surveys in the Caatinga forest.