Climate change has been affecting bumblebees for over 100 years

Biologists have studied the structure of the wings of bees in museum collections and found that anthropogenic climate change has been negatively affecting populations for at least 100 years.

The results of their study were published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. of Ecology of animals).

In the last 10 years, ecologists and biologists have often noted a rapid decline in the number of domestic and wild bees, as well as bumblebees in all regions of the Earth. In recent years, the number of wild bees in North America has decreased by about a third, and the number of domestic bees and bumblebees has decreased significantly and dangerously.

It is not known what the exact reasons for the extinction of bees and bumblebees are, but environmentalists point out that it is associated with global warming and the emergence of new diseases and parasites, including mites of the genus Varroa, DWV and the mysterious “colony collapse syndrome, which causes worker bees to leave the queen and collectively leave the hive.

The researchers wanted to find out why climatic factors began to influence the state of the populations of these insects. So they studied the collections of insects in the museums of London, Edinburgh, Carlisle and Liverpool, which had been collected for more than 100 years.

Biologists are interested in bumblebees because the size and shape of their wings reflect the condition of the hives. As a rule, poor environmental conditions lead to a noticeable asymmetry in the shape of the wings of bees and bumblebees.

The analysis showed that climate change began to affect the life of British bee populations from 1925. At first, his influence grew slowly, but since 1975 the trend has accelerated.

Researcher Cantwell-Jones and his colleagues said that the most noticeable changes in the shape of the wings of bumblebees were recorded in those seasons when there were abnormally high temperatures and heavy rains in Britain. The scientists concluded that this indicates that in the coming years the state of the population of these insects will deteriorate significantly as a result of additional increases in temperature and precipitation caused by global warming.

Source: TASS

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