Social Wasps in Riparian Forest in Bataypora, Mato Grosso do Sul State, Brazil

Inventories of species con tribute valuable information on the ecological characteristics of a region and, increase knowledge of its natural resources. Few inventories of social wasps have been made in Mato Grosso do Sul, and none on polistines. The aim of this work was carry out an inventory of social wasps in nine fragments of riparian forest of the municipality of Bataypora, Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil, to clarify the abundance, diversity, and richness of the group and evaluate the efficiencies of different sampling methodologies. The study was performed between November 2008 and March 2009. We used both active searching and attractive traps, in which 512 individuals of 18 species of six genera were captured. Genera Polybia and Polistes comprised 78% of the species collected. The diversity index was H' = 0.7259 and richness was S' = 18 species. Regarding the efficiency of the methodologies, the active search was more efficient, capturing 83% of total number of species present in this work, the honey-baited traps 50%, and the sardine-baited traps 28%. Agelaia pallipes comprised 67% of the total individuals collected by the attractive trap, and Polybia paulista comprised 28% of the total individuals captured by active searching. Comparing the results from active searching and attractive traps illustrated the importance of the use of more than one method, in order to record tie largest possible number of species.