Forewords
Introduction
Acknowledgements
SECTION 1
Pollen and the Evolution of Mutualism
1. Pot-Pollen as a Discipline. What Does it Include?
1.1. Pot-Pollen and Palynology from an Ecological Point of View 1.2. A Modern Synthesis of Bee-Pollen and Pot-Pollen Study 1.3. Plant Reproduction
1.4. Pollination 1.5. Pollen Biology and Palynology
1.6. Applied Pollen Taxonomy
2. Are Stingless Bees a Broadly Polylectic Group? An Empirical Study of the Adjustments Required for an Improved Assessment of Pollen Diet in Bees
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Pollen Specialization Categories in Bees 2.3. Pollen Analysis of Samples 2.4. Adjustment Calculations to Assess Pollen Specialization Categories in Stingless Bees 2.4.1. Modifying the Number of Foraged Resource Items: Threshold Values and Pollen Type Versus Pollen Species
2.4.2. Modifying the Number of Available Resources: Spatial and Temporal Adjustments
2.5. The Importance of an Appropriate Assessment of Pollen Specialization in Bees: Factors Causing Low Number of Foraged Items 2.5.1 Abundant Versus Minor Pollen Types 2.5.2 Recruitment Behaviour
2.5.3 Intra-nest Pollen Analysis
2.6. Factors Causing High Number of Available Items
2.7. Polylecty, Broad Polylecty or Simply degrees of polylecty?
3. Pollen collected by stingless bees: a contribution to understand Amazonian biodiversity
3.1. Introduction
3.1.1 Origin and Evolution of Plant-Bee Interactions
3.2. The Use of Pollen Analysis in the Study of Bees in the Amazon Rainforest
3.3. Diversity of Plants, Stingless Bees and their Interactions in Central Amazon 3.4. Amazonian Bee Diet, Biology and Suggested Interactions Potentially Leading to Pollination 3.5. How to Improve Meliponiculture for Sustainable Development in the Amazon 3.6. Conclusions
4. The Stingless Honey Bees (Apidae, Apinae: Meliponini) in Panama, and Ecology from Pollen Analysis
4.1. An Introduction to the Stingless Honey Bees and Pot-Pollen, in Panama 4.2. Pollen niche, relative specialization, and pollen spectrum 4.2.1 Qualitative and quantitative analyses
4.2.2 Field bee short-term resource selection
4.2.3 Pollen of popular meliponines , Africanized honeybees and lesser known species
4.2.4 Pollination ecology and population biology
4.2.5 Conclusions and ecological perspective
5. The value of plants for the Mayan stingless honey bee Melipona beecheii (Apidae: Meliponini): a pollen-based study in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico 5.1. Understanding the Ecology of a Mayan Resource and Cultural Icon 5.2. Baseline Studies of Invasive Honeybees and Native Neotropical Bees 5.3. Fieldwork 5.4. &nbs
About the Author: Professor Patricia Vit, MSc PhD
Universidad de Los AndesFaculty of Pharmacy and BioanalysisFood Science DepartmentMérida, Venezuela
The Sydney UniversityCancer Research GroupDiscipline of Biomedical ScienceSydney, Australia
Dr. Silvia R.M. PedroUniversidade de São PauloSchool of Philosophy, Sciences and LiteratureBiology DepartmentBrasil Dr. David W. RoubikSmithsonian Tropical Research InstituteTerrestrial Biology DivisionEntomology DepartmentPanama
