Bees face extinction due to climate change making it too hot to handle - Central Oregon Daily

Bees facing extinction thanks to climate change
Scientists say rising heat as a potential culprit for the decline in bee populations worldwide.

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By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Bees face extinction because their nests are overheating due to climate change, warns a new study.

Wild bumblebees all over the world need a similar nest temperature to thrive.

But with global warming driving temperatures up, scientists say the pollinators' nests could be too hot for them to handle.

In the new study, published in the journal Frontiers in Bee Science, scientists identify rising heat as a potential culprit for the decline in bee populations worldwide.

They say soaring temperatures compromise the bees’ ability to build liveable nests in which healthy larvae can develop.

Study lead author Dr. Peter Kevan said: “The decline in populations and ranges of several species of bumblebees may be explained by issues of overheating of the nests and the brood.

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“The constraints on the survival of the bumblebee brood indicate that heat is likely a major factor, with heating of the nest above about 35 degrees Celsius being lethal, despite the remarkable capacity of bumblebees to thermoregulate.”

He said there are many bumblebee species around the world, living in many different environments.

Lots of them are in a decline linked to climate change, but identifying the cause has proven difficult.

However, by reviewing the literature, Dr. Kevan and his colleagues identified a "critical commonality" between the species, regardless of geographic range: the optimal temperature of their nests, 28C to 32C.

Dr. Kevan, of the University of Guelph, Canada, said: “We can assume that the similarity reflects the evolutionary relatedness of the various species."

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Because the characteristic appears to be common between so many species, Dr. Kevan says it may have "limited evolutionary plasticity" - meaning the bumblebees would find it hard to adapt to rising temperatures.

He said they would struggle to remain within their thermal neutral zone — a point at which staying the right temperature requires minimal metabolic expenditure. Heat stress that takes a species out of the range is considered dangerous.

Dr. Kevan said: “Excessively high temperatures are more harmful to most animals and plants than cool temperatures.

"When conditions are cool, organisms that do not metabolically regulate their body temperatures simply slow down, but when temperatures get too high metabolic processes start to break down and cease. Death ensues quickly.”

Reviewing 180 years of literature, Dr. Kevan and his team found that bees seem to be able to survive at up to 36Ce and develop optimally at around 30C to 32C.

While bumblebees have some behavioral adaptations that allow them to thermoregulate, Dr. Kevan says it may not be enough to deal with climate change.

He explained that the bumblebee colony also acts as a ‘superorganism’ where reproductive fitness is dependent on the collective survival and reproduction of the colony rather than individual bees.

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Dr. Kevan said one bumblebee may cope better with the heat than another, but if the nest is too hot to raise healthy larvae the whole colony suffers, regardless of individual bumblebees’ adaptation.

He said: “The effect of high nest temperatures has not been studied very much, which is surprising.

“We can surmise that nest temperatures above the mid-30s Celsius would likely be highly detrimental and that above about 35C death would occur, probably quite quickly.”

Previous research has shown that higher nest temperatures compromise bee queens’ strength and reproductive ability, and lead to smaller worker bees in poorer condition.

Dr. Kevan says that if heat has a similar effect on bumblebees, so that colonies produce less healthy offspring at a higher temperature, then global warming could be directly leading to their decline.

To ensure that bumblebees continue to thrive, the team is calling for more research into what they say is an understudied aspect of bumblebee ecology: nest morphology, material properties, temperature, and thermoregulation.

Dr. Kevan added: “We hope that future scientists may take the ideas we present and apply them to their own research on bumblebee health and conversation."

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