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Bee Conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar: Diversity, Status and Threats*

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Bee Conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar: Diversity, Status and Threats* Apidologie 40 (2009) 355–366 Available online at: c INRA/DIB-AGIB/EDP Sciences, 2009 www.apidologie.org DOI: 10.1051/apido/2009016 Review article Bee conservation in Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar: diversity, status and threats* Connal D. Eardley1,MaryGikungu2, Michael P. Schwarz3 1 Agricultural Research Council, Private Bag X134, Queenswood, 0121, Pretoria, South Africa 2 Zoology Department, National Museums of Kenya, PO Box 40658-00100, Nairobi, Kenya 3 School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia Received 14 October 2008 – Revised 2 February 2009 – Accepted 4 February 2009 Abstract – Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar contain a wealth of bee diversity, with particularly high levels of endemicity in Madagascar. Although Africa contains seven biodiversity hotspots, the bee fauna appears rather moderate given the size of the continent. This could be due to various factors, an important one being the dearth of bee taxonomists working in Africa and difficulties in carrying out research in many regions. Anecdotal observations suggest a very large number of undescribed bee species. A number of se- rious threats to this diversity exist, especially habitat destruction and degradation. Bee diversity in these regions is likely to be important for both agriculture and indigenous ecosystems, but is under-appreciated. Reliance on conserved areas such as National Parks will not be sufficient to preserve bee diversity in Africa and Madagascar; changes to land use practices and development of industries that facilitate conservation, such as ecotourism, will be essential. There is also a strong need to build regional expertise and infrastruc- ture that can be used for documenting bee diversity, identifying the most urgent conservation issues, and implementing conservation strategies. Support from developed countries and international funding agencies is needed for this. bees / conservation / biodiversity / Africa / Madagascar / Apoidea 1. INTRODUCTION ing materials, the beetle larvae that San peo- ple used for poison arrows (Koch, 1958;Shaw Trying to understand the issues surrounding et al., 1963) and harmful species like agricul- bee conservation in sub-Saharan Africa and tural pests. They have names for all of these Madagascar is complex. It requires consider- species. Food and medicinal uses for honey ation of both the history of bee research in from stingless bees are known (Macharia, un- these regions, as well as the prevailing socio- publ. data), but today these are better known to economic and cultural circumstances. These rural communities than urban people. are vastly different from North America and Europe, and the strategies that are needed to While honey bees and sometimes stingless conserve bee diversity are similarly very dif- bees are widely regarded for their pollina- ferent (cf. Byrne and Fitzpatrick, 2009). tion services, the benefits from other bees are African and Malagasy people appreciate the largely overlooked by farmers – to what ex- aspects of biodiversity that tangibly affect their tent they were recognised in the past is not daily lives. These include beneficial species, known. Increased crop production has been such as those used for medicine, food, build- mainly based on the use of agronomic inputs, such as quality seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, Corresponding author: M.P. Schwarz, with little regard to non-Apis pollination as an Michael.Schwarz@flinders.edu.au agricultural eco-service that may require pro- * Manuscript editor: Tomas Murray tection. Article published by EDP Sciences 356 C.D. Eardley et al. Figure 1. Map of Sub-Saharan Africa showing broad distribution of vegetation types. Adapted from the NASA Scientific Visualization Stu- dio maps (http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ vis/) and the University of Chicago Fathom Archive African map series (http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/). Bee research in sub-Saharan Africa has in- deals with the protection of Kakamega Forest cluded extensive research on the honey bee, in Kenya. Apis mellifera L., especially in South Africa Although Africa and Madagascar are ge- (Hepburn and Guye, 1993; Johannsmeier, ographical neighbours, they are in many 2001), limited work on stingless bees, haphaz- respects very different. They are therefore ard descriptions of new species, revisional tax- mostly treated separately in the discussions onomic studies for two-thirds of the known that follow. genera, a host of distributional records, and a relatively small number of studies on ecol- ogy and social biology. Eardley and Urban 2. BEE DIVERSITY (in preparation) provide complete references to the non-Apis studies in a species catalogue. 2.1. Sub-Saharan Africa Research on Malagasy bees has been simi- lar, except that all previous studies have been Sub-Saharan Africa is an enormous and di- brought together with a full revision of the bee verse continent with a host of different ecosys- fauna by Pauly et al. (2001). tems, from rain forest to desert. A broad veg- Prospects for bee research in sub-Saharan etation map for regions south of the Sahara is Africa are improving, and there is a growing given in Figure 1. A large proportion of the awareness of the need to conserve pollinator continent is savannah, with many different bee diversity. This is largely driven by an interest pollinated plants, and with biotypes ranging in agricultural pollination management. How- from dry to relatively wet. The continent has ever, the potential importance of all bees, as seven biodiversity hotspots, as identified by part of an ecosystem approach to conserva- Conservation International (CI). (http://www. tion, is recognized in a number of projects. biodiversityhotspots.org), making it second to One such project is BIOTA East Africa, which Asia and the Pacific Islands in biologically rich Bee conservation in Africa and Madagascar 357 areas. The highest temperate plant biodiver- sity in the world occurs in the winter rain- fall areas in the south-western region of Africa (Koekemoor, unpubl. data). All this should suggest a rich bee fauna. The described bee fauna in sub-Saharan Africa can, however, at best be described as moderately diverse. Six of the seven bee fam- ilies recognized by Michener (2007) occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the Stenotriti- dae being confined to Australia. About 21% of the World’s bee genera occur in Sub- Saharan Africa (102 from a total of about 476; Michener, 2007), and about half of these are either cosmopolitan or Old World en- demics. At a generic level, this suggests rea- sonably high diversity. However, at a species level diversity is less rich. The 2600 de- scribed Sub-Saharan species comprise only about 13% of the global fauna of around 19400 species (http://www.itis.gov./ and Eardley, un- publ. data). Some highly speciose genera, like Perdita and Centris, do not occur in Africa, whilst Andrena, which is diverse in the Ho- larctic (about 1500 species), has only nine African species. The most speciose genera in Africa are Lasioglossum (about 260 species, Figure 2. Map of Madagascar showing broad vege- no revision available) and Megachile (about tation types (excluding marshlands). Adapted from 322 species, Pasteels, 1965), and these are the Food and Agriculture Organization (United fairly small proportions of their global species Nations) (http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/agpc/doc/ numbers. Counprof/Madagascar/madagascareng.htm)and It is possible that low species diversity in the University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Map Africa is more apparent than real. Schwarz Collection (www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/madagascar. and Bull (unpublished) found that in extensive html). nest collections of allodapines in South Africa, about one third of species encountered did not fit current species descriptions, and less- 2.2. Madagascar intensive allodapine collections from Uganda indicate a great many undescribed species and Madagascar is the World’s 4th largest is- possibly new genera (McLeish and Schwarz, land. It exhibits a much wider range of ecosys- unpubl. data). For allodapines at least, this tems and biodiversity than most other large suggests a wealth of unrecorded diversity, de- islands. This is probably due to its physi- spite the Herculean efforts of Michener (1975) cal geography, the times since it rifted from in revising the African allodapines. The prob- other major land masses, and its distance from lem appears to be one of a mismatch be- sources for cross-ocean dispersal (Yoder and tween the sheer size of sub-Saharan Africa Nowak, 2006). The eastern mountain range and the number of African bee taxonomists. also leads to very different climatic regimes Even with the involvement of taxonomists across the island. There is lowland rainforest from other regions, political and infrastruc- in the east, montane and dry deciduous forest tural circumstances make biodiversity research in the west and high elevation thicket in the very difficult in many important regions. central highlands (Fig. 2). The south-west is 358 C.D. Eardley et al. arid with spiny forests and scrub. All regions represent dispersal via vegetation rafts aris- have suffered from prolonged slash and burn ing from tsunamis or extreme floods in east- agriculture, leading to extensive grassland and ern Africa, since several large rivers flow into areas dominated by exotic weeds such as Eu- the Mozambique Channel separating Africa calyptus and Grevillea. from Madagascar. On the other hand, another Madagascar has played an important role in wood nesting bee, Lithurgus pullatus, occurs our understanding of historical biogeography in Madagascar, East Africa, India, Mauritius, (Yoder and Novak, 2006). However, for many the Seychelles and the Maldives (Pauly et al., groups of organisms it is still not clear whether 2001), and it is unlikely this could be ex- affinities with African taxa represent vicariant plained by vegetation rafting. The possible origins, dating back to the rifting of Madagas- role of anthropogenic dispersal for some bees car+India from Africa, or whether this is due in Madagascar is something that needs study. to dispersal across the Mozambique Channel.
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