Re-establishment of cavity-nesting bee and wasp communities along a reforestation gradient in southern Amazonia

Global initiatives to reforest degraded areas have intensified in recent years, in an attempt to reverse the environmental impacts of habitat loss on species and ecosystem provided by them. However, the effectiveness of such reforestation initiatives in re-establishing biodiversity is still poorly understood. Here, we test how reforestation type and intensity applied to deforested areas affect the reestablishment of communities of cavity-nesting bees and wasps. We deployed experimental trap-nests along a reforestation gradient of increasing structural similarity to primary forest, after 18 years of reforestation. We found that reestablishment, in terms of abundance and richness of both bees and wasps, was greatest at an intermediate point along the reforestation gradient. However, these communities were highly dissimilar to primary forest, and recovery of intact insect community composition was only achieved when reforestation was more similar in structure to natural forests. This effect was more pronounced for bees than for wasps. Our findings suggest that along the reforestation gradient, services provided by wasps will be more easily recovered than those provided by bees. Our results have important implications for the challenges of restoring and maintaining species biodiversity as well as their associated ecosystem services.