New patterns of the tree beta diversity and its determinants in the largest savanna and wetland biomes of South America

Governance, institutional and economic frameworks for Urban Forests as a Nature-Based Solution in Europe

Urban forests as nature-based solutions (UF-NbS) play a crucial role for promoting the health and well-being of urban populations. Despite increasing recognition of their importance, knowledge gaps remain regarding UF-NbS implementation, particularly with respect to their performance, their perception, and on decision-making and governance practices for their implementation and management. Grounded in a project-as-practice approach and based on sixteen UF-NbS case histories, this paper seeks to gain insights into UF-NbS project actualities by an identification of characteristic trends as a function of a projects' scope and purpose, or challenge-orientation, respectively. A particular emphasis is on project structure and coordination, on the scope and depth of participation and stakeholder involvement, and on funding mechanisms. Identified trends reveal centrally coordinated, single-responsible public authorities as the most common project structure, but with certain feature contents, i.e., regeneration and reclamation, as being associated with more decentralised forms of governance. It is concluded that irrespective of challenge-orientation, comparatively broad participation appears to be realised within the UF-NbS framework, however, the depth of participation differs considerably. With respect to funding, a strong reliance on public capital is asserted for the UF-NbS context, however, various forms of private contributions appear reasonably common across the assessed case histories. Recommendations for policy-making and avenues of future research are identified, including the validation of identified trends, the fostering of collaboration, the dispersal of decision-making authority, the encouragement for implementing non-tokenistic modes of participation in UF-NbS governance, and the promotion of potentially under-utilised funds.

Contrasting patterns of foraging behavior in neotropical stingless bees using pollen and honey metabarcoding

Stingless bees are major flower visitors in the tropics, but their foraging preferences and behavior are still poorly understood. Studying stingless bee interactions with angiosperms is methodologically challenging due to the high tropical plant diversity and inaccessibility of upper canopy flowers in forested habitats. Pollen DNA metabarcoding offers an opportunity of assessing floral visitation efficiently and was applied here to understand stingless bee floral resources spectra and foraging behavior. We analyzed pollen and honey from nests of three distantly related stingless bee species, with different body size and social behavior: Melipona rufiventris, Scaptotrigona postica and Tetragonisca angustula. Simultaneously, we evaluate the local floristic components through seventeen rapid botanical surveys conducted at different distances from the nests. We discovered a broad set of explored floral sources, with 46.3 plant species per bee species in honey samples and 53.67 in pollen samples. Plant families Myrtaceae, Asteraceae, Euphorbiaceae, Melastomataceae and Malpighiaceae dominated the records, indicating stingless bee preferences for abundant resources that flowers of these families provide in the region. Results also reinforce the preference of stingless bees for forest trees, even if only available at long distances. Our high-resolution results encourage future bee-plant studies using pollen and honey metabarcoding in hyper-diverse tropical environments.