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Published on
2020 Feb 21

Enumeration and identification of pollinating bees (Hymenoptera, Apoidea) kept in the laboratory of the Biodiversity Research Department


Burundian Office for Environmental Protection

The OBPE and the University of Burundi organize annual internships for 3rd year students from different faculties working on various themes.

University of Burundi

It is in this context that the student NDUWAYO Rénovat from the Faculty of Sciences, Department of Biology completed an internship whose theme is entitled: “Counting and identifying pollinating bees (Hymenoptera, Apoidea) preserved at the OBPE biodiversity research laboratory”.

The study consisted of a taxonomic identification of pollinator bees kept in the OBPE laboratory located in Jabe within the Biodiversity Research Department. The internship lasted a period of one month from January 2 to February 2, 2020. The supervision of the student was provided by Dr. Déogratias NDUWARUGIRA, Professor at the University of Burundi and Msc Longin NDAYIKEZA, researcher at the OBPE.

The internship was carried out in three stages as described in the following paragraphs.

Separation of specimens by morphospecies

The first step consisted in checking the boxes made available to him whether all the specimens had labels on which the following information was mentioned: the date, the location, the name of the collector. Then, the student rinsed with alcohol and sorted the specimens concerned by the study.

Identification of specimens by morphospecies  

 

The second step involved the identification of pollinating bee specimens. This was done first by morphospecies, which consists in separating the specimens taking into account their morphological resemblance. Then, an identification under the binocular and using the determination keys (Canal et al 2010 and Stephen and Marcall) was carried out.

Identification of pollinating bee species
  Identification of subbinocular specimens

 

Finally, the third step consisted of recording the data, analysing it and writing the report.