By EurekAlert
Sunday, September 5, 2010
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A queen bumble bee (Bombus
bifarius) collects nectar from a flower of the glacier lily
(Erythronium grandiflorum) at a research site in Irwin,
Colo.
Click here for more information.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TORONTO, ON - Widespread reports of a decline in the population
of bees and other flower-visiting animals have aroused fear and
speculation that pollination is also likely on the decline. A
recent University of Toronto study provides the first long-term
evidence of a downward trend in pollination, while also pointing to
climate change as a possible contributor.
"Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we
suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when
flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more
important factor," says James Thomson, a scientist with U of T's
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Thomson's 17-year examination of the wild lily in the Rocky
Mountains of Colorado is one of the longest-term studies of
pollination ever done. It reveals a progressive decline in
pollination over the years, with particularly noteworthy
pollination deficits early in the season. The study will be
published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences on September 6.
Three times each year, Thomson compared the fruiting rate of
unmanipulated flowers to that of flowers that are supplementally
pollinated by hand. "Early in the year, when bumble bee queens are
still hibernating, the fruiting rates are especially low," he says.
"This is sobering because it suggests that pollination is
vulnerable even in a relatively pristine environment that is free
of pesticides and human disturbance but still subject to climate
change."
Thomson began his long-term studies in the late 1980s after
purchasing a remote plot of land and building a log cabin in the
middle of a meadow full of glacier lilies. His work has been
supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
SOURCE
