Effects of Habitat Isolation on Flower-Visiting Bee at The Southern Margin of Halimun Mountain, Indonesia.

(Funded by Whitley Laing Award)

In tropical landscape, there is an increasing isolation of agricultural patches from the natural habitat.   Here we tested the hypothesis that habitat isolation affect the community of flower- visiting bee and.   The objective of the research was to evaluate spatial pattern of flower-visiting bee in mustard patches  that are situated in different distance from the nearest forest.   We experiementally set up small “habitat islands” of mustard in traditionally managed agricultural landscape that are situated in increasing distances ( 86-1078 m) from  the nearest forest to evaluate the effects of isolation on flower-visiting bee. Each habitat island consisted of approximatelly 20 pods each with single mustard crop. Increasing isolation of small habitat resulted in increasing number of species of flower-visiting bee.

This result contrast with common expectation that increased isolation from the nearest natural habitat are characterized by only loss of species number. Our study also identified that species composition between habitat type has significantly changed and this is expected to affect the ecological functions played by different insect pollinator assemblages.  Species succession was also found across different habitat types.   Habitat–specific species seems to be a very important factor in shaping the dynamic pattern of insect pollinator community.