How Climate Change is Messing with Bees
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-climate-change-messing-bees-ability-pollinate-180956523/
Source: By Marissa Fessenden, Smithsonian Magazine
For Investigation: 10.3
Excerpt: Bees are vitally important to the health of the planet: The more than 30,000 bee species around the world are the most important group of pollinators for farming and wild plants. But populations are declining due to a variety of factors including human development, pesticides, disease and a changing climate, reports Clayton Aldern for Grist. ...Rebecca Irwin, an associate professor at Dartmouth College conducts her work at at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado. There, she investigates the effects of changes in phenology — or the timing of when something occurs. "When the snow melts earlier, the flowers are going to emerge earlier and they’re going to bloom earlier," she says in the video. "We don’t really understand if the bees are going to follow suit." ...If the flowers are available, but no bees are around to pollinate them, that phenology mismatch might be a problem. ...The experimental results are yet to be published, but the fact that climate change is affecting the relationship between bees and the plants they pollinate is well on its way to being established. ...For Grist, Aldern mentions a recent study in Science that shows bee populations are having trouble moving their ranges to cooler or higher regions to follow temperature shifts. For Nature, Daniel Cressey reports: "As temperatures rise, the southern limits of many North American and European bumblebee species’ ranges are moving north — by as much as 300 kilometers in some cases, researchers report today (9 July) in Science. But the northern edges of the bees’ ranges are staying in place, leading to an overall contraction of the insects’ habitat."...
Source: By Marissa Fessenden, Smithsonian Magazine
For Investigation: 10.3
Excerpt: Bees are vitally important to the health of the planet: The more than 30,000 bee species around the world are the most important group of pollinators for farming and wild plants. But populations are declining due to a variety of factors including human development, pesticides, disease and a changing climate, reports Clayton Aldern for Grist. ...Rebecca Irwin, an associate professor at Dartmouth College conducts her work at at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado. There, she investigates the effects of changes in phenology — or the timing of when something occurs. "When the snow melts earlier, the flowers are going to emerge earlier and they’re going to bloom earlier," she says in the video. "We don’t really understand if the bees are going to follow suit." ...If the flowers are available, but no bees are around to pollinate them, that phenology mismatch might be a problem. ...The experimental results are yet to be published, but the fact that climate change is affecting the relationship between bees and the plants they pollinate is well on its way to being established. ...For Grist, Aldern mentions a recent study in Science that shows bee populations are having trouble moving their ranges to cooler or higher regions to follow temperature shifts. For Nature, Daniel Cressey reports: "As temperatures rise, the southern limits of many North American and European bumblebee species’ ranges are moving north — by as much as 300 kilometers in some cases, researchers report today (9 July) in Science. But the northern edges of the bees’ ranges are staying in place, leading to an overall contraction of the insects’ habitat."...