*2.3. Environmental Conditions*

In order to determine which environmental variables, influence the total richness and abundance of species, we measured the following traits in each study point: paved area, the richness of plants visited by bees, flower coverage, number of trees and diameter at breast height (DBH), of trees with more than 90 cm in circumference. The identification of the plant species where the bees were captured was made with the help of specialized literature [23–25] and the Flora Brazil project [26]. We measured the paved area inside the UGAs using the Google Earth Pro polygon tool (version 7.3.3.7786).

We identified the plants using photographs and exsiccates made with plant samples and deposited in Herbarium UENF. First, plant species inside the study areas were classified based on the following categories: native or exotic in Brazil, habit (herbaceous, shrubby, arboreal), nectar, pollen and/or oil as resources for pollinators [26,27]. Next, we estimated flower coverage for all flowering species on the same days of bee sampling. Finally, we calculated the area occupied by each plant with a measuring tape. From this total, we estimated the percentage covered by the flowers for each plant and we multiplied this percentage by the total plant coverage to obtain the flower coverage in square meters, we summed the results for all plants to obtain a day value and we considered the flower coverage in each UGA as the mean value for the four sampling days.

To analyze the environmental variables around the UGAs, we used the paved area around and the number of buildings with more than three floors that potentially can act as a barrier to bee dispersal, increasing isolation [28]. We measured these variables within a 500 m radius (buffers) from the center of each of the 12 UGAs. The paved area inside each buffer was measured with the polygon tool and we counted the buildings with more than three floors with the street view tool (both tools from Google Earth Pro, version 7.3.3.7786).
