Increasing overall temperatures due to climate change along with severe spikes of heat are tied to drops in bumble bee numbers in North America and Europe faster than they can find new habitats, according to a study published Thursday (February 6) in Science.
To get a sense of how bees have fared over the last century, the authors turned to bee observations over time cataloged by museums across North America and Europe. These included more than 500,000 sightings of 66 bumble bee species in two time periods: 1901–1974 and 2000–2014. A single observation is defined as evidence of a nearby hive, whether one bee is spotted or the entire hive. The statistical analysis showed that in the latter period, sightings in North America were down 46 percent, while Europe saw losses around 17 percent.
To interpret the data, the team developed a model that compared the number of observations against local temperature variations, taking into account variables such as land development. They were able to predict local extinction events of species, the biodiversity of bumble bees, and how likely the bees were to colonize a new area.
“Perhaps the most exciting element is that we developed a method to predict extinction risk that works very well for bumble bees and could in theory be applied universally to other organisms,” coauthor Peter Soroye, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa, explains in a statement. “With a predictive tool like this, we hope to identify areas where conservation actions would be critical to stopping declines.”
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