Diversity and Conservation of Leaf Cutter Bees (Hymenoptera: megachilidae)

More than one-third of the world’s crops require pollination to set seeds and fruits Dias et al. [1]. It is likely that wild bee community is sufficient to provide services for multiple crops, including some that are not serviced by honeybees Kremen et al. [2]. Under several situations non-Apis bees are better pollinators than Apis species because of efficient tripping, fast foraging rate, longer tongue length, buzz pollination and oligo leptic foraging. Among non-Apis bees, Megachilidae is the second largest family next to Apidae with respect to the number of species. They play an important role in pollination of many cultivated and wild plants Veeresh Kumar [3,4]. Many plants provide abundant and diverse pollen and nectar to support these bees in their habitat. Activity of these bees depends on the availability of resources and nesting sites in a habitat. There is a decline in the pollinator population in the past few decades due to drought, fire, habitat fragmentation, destruction of natural habitats, and tremendous use of pesticides generating great threats to the production of crops, thus leading to a food crisis. In this context, conservation of pollinators has emerged as a major issue. In order to formulate effective conservation strategies there is a need to generate information on diversity, abundance, associated flowering plants to fulfill the need of conservation planning.