Ankara’daki tozlaştırıcı arılardan halictidae (apiformes: apoidea: hymenoptera) familyası üzerine faunistik çalışmalar

Abstract

Tozlaştırıcı arılar, Apoidea üst familyası üyesi Apiformes grubu içinde yer alan arı familyalarını içerir. Türkiye’de balarıları ve bombus arıları dışındaki tozlaştırıcı arılar ile ilgili çok az çalışma vardır. Bu çalışmada tozlaştırıcı arılardan Halictidae familyası ele alınmış, Ankara ve çevresinden 6 cinse ait 17 tür saptanmıştır. Türlerin ziyaret ettikleri bitkiler, Ankara, Türkiye ve Dünya yayılışları verilmiştir. Bu tipteki öncü faunistik ve sistematik çalışmaların artması ile ülkemizde tozlaştırıcı arıların tarımda ve ekosistem yönetiminde kullanılabilirliği de artacaktır.

Halictidae is one of the most diverse families of all bees (Apiformes: Apoidea: Hymenoptera). It contains 50– 80 genera according to different authors and more than 5000 species. As it is clearly known that bees, in general, have very important role on pollination of angiosperms, halictids also have a great influence on this service. The pollination studies performed on bees such as Apis spp., Bombus spp., Megachilidae and Andrenidae species showed that Halictidae is also one of the most important pollinator groups. Beside this, halictids have a unique feature that they exhibit nearly every degree of sociality, ranging from solitary to eusocialilty. The great diversity in life strategies might have leaded diversity in food selection which could possibly be an important reason why Halictidae is one of the dominant pollinator of angiosperms. These features show that Halictidae maybe a beneficial insect in agriculture as a pollinator. To use Halictidae in agriculture it will be very important to develop artificial nests that are compatible for soil nesting bees. The regional studies of Turkish Halictids are very rare. The only studies were Özbek (1979) and Warncke (1975). In addition to insufficient data about the number of Halictidae species that could be found in Turkey, the distributions of these species also haven’t been studied well. Beside this, there are no any new faunistic lists that have corrections of renamed Halictid species. The main target of this study is to make contributions to previous studies on this issue. In this study 17 species, which belong to 6 genera of Halictidae family were determined from Ankara province. We excluded cleptoparasitic genus Sphecodes and a large and taxonomically problematic genus Evylaeus. The species, Halictus (Halictus) quadricinctus (Fabricius, 1776); H. (Acalcaripes) patellatus; H. (Hexataenites) scabiosae (Rossi, 1790); H. (Hexataenites) cochleareitarsis; H. (Argalictus) luganicus; H. (Tytthalictus) maculatus Smith, 1848; H. (Monilapis) compressus (Walckenaer, 1802); H. (Monilapis) simplex Blüthgen, 1923; H. (Monilapis) tetrazonianellus; H. (Monilapis) sajoi; Seladonia kessleri (Bramson, 1879); S. seladonia (Fabricius, 1794); S. (Mucoreohalictus) pollinosa (Sichel, 1860); Lasioglossum xanthopus (Kirby, 1802); Systropha planidens Giraud, 1861; Nomiapis diversipes Latreille, 1806; Nomioides (Nomioides) minutissimus (Rossi, 1790) could be identified in our research. In this study their distributions among Ankara, Turkey and World are given in addition to the data about the flowers they visit. It is a fact that the 17 species don’t fully cover all the Halictid fauna of Ankara but this is just a small step for taxonomic studies on Halictidae of Turkey. New studies should be done on larger areas with a long survey schedule. Because there is not enough studies on this issue in Turkey, these kinds of taxonomic and faunistic studies have to start as soon as possible.