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Note that this is an embargoed press release:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Subject: ESA Press Release:
Saving Our Bees<br>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:31:38 -0400<br>
From: "Christine Buckley" <christine@esa.org><br><br>
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<b>Embargoed for release Monday, August 4, 2008, 12:01 AM CT<br>
</b>Contact: Christine Buckley (202) 833-8773 x 211; christine@esa.org
<br>
or Nadine Lymn (202) 833-8773 x 205; nadine@esa.org<br>
<b> <br>
<div align="center">Saving Our Bees<br>
<i>Ecologists assess the impact of people on pollinators<br>
</i></b></div>
<br>
<b>Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting, </b>Organized Oral
Session 4 <br>
“The Landscape-Scale Ecology of Pollinators and Pollination: Mechanisms,
Patterns, and Processes”<br>
<br>
Monday, Aug. 4, 2008, 1:30-5:30 p.m., 202C Midwest Airlines Center<br>
Organizers: Neal Williams, Bryn Mawr College;
<a href="mailto:nwilliam@brynmawr.edu">nwilliam@brynmawr.edu</a><br>
James Cresswell, University of Exeter, U.K.;
<a href="mailto:j.e.cresswell@ex.ac.uk">j.e.cresswell@ex.ac.uk</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Most of the world’s plant species rely on animals to transfer their
pollen to other plants. The undisputed queen of these animal pollinators
is the bee, made up of about 30,000 species worldwide, whose daily
flights aid in the reproduction of more than half of the world’s
flowering plants. In recent years, however, an unprecedented and
unexplained decline in bee populations across the U.S. and Europe has
placed the health of ecosystems and the sustainability of crops in peril.
<br>
<br>
In an oral session at the Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of
America, an interdisciplinary group of scientists will explore the
problem of bee habitat loss at a broad scale to determine what can be
done to preserve bees in their native habitats. The session, titled “The
Landscape-Scale Ecology of Pollinators and Pollination,” will include
scientists in the fields of computer science, mathematics and ecology
from institutions in the U.S., Europe and Asia. <br>
<br>
The most recent and headline-capturing phenomenon, known as colony
collapse disorder, is characterized by the disappearance of adult
honeybees from beekeeper hives, leaving behind bee larvae with no
caretakers. The bee decline is particularly unnerving for farmers because
an estimated 80 percent of all food crops are pollinated by honeybees and
their wild cousins. Stymied scientists have proposed a host of reasons
for managed honeybee declines, including climate change, parasites,
diseases, overexposure to pesticides and loss of suitable habitat; most
researchers believe that a combination of these factors is responsible.
In this oral session, scientists turn their attention to native, wild
bees to determine whether they are undergoing – or might undergo – the
same decline. <br>
<br>
One of the session’s organizers, Neal Williams of Bryn Mawr College,
hopes that the session will result in the synthesis of ideas from many
disciplines. “We want to know: Can we look at landscape models in a
predictive way and use them to inform us about natural populations and
how they deliver pollinator services to crops?” he asks. <br>
<br>
Rachael Winfree of Rutgers University is particularly interested in the
health of native bees as “biological insurance” against the decline of
honeybees. “Over half of the world’s native plants require animal
pollinators, and most of those are bees,” she says. “Native pollinators
are serving as a backup plan for the honeybee.”<br>
<br>
Winfree will present a study that combines data from over 50 published
studies of bee population sizes and diversity. She found that in areas of
extreme fragmentation due to human development, animal grazing, logging
and crop fields, bee populations were smaller and the number of bee
species was lower than in natural or minimally disturbed areas. <br>
<br>
Scientists are also using technological methods to further understand bee
communities. Daniel Chalk, a graduate student at the University of Exeter
in the United Kingdom, used an artificial intelligence computer model to
predict flight patterns of wild bumblebees. His model is useful because
it can predict how bees would forage, or look for food resources, in
different landscapes. <br>
<br>
“Crucially, our model is able to predict the behavior of bees in
larger-scale foraging environments, where the foraging patches can be
thought of as large fields of crops,” says Chalk. His model, he says,
could help scientists understand how land disturbance caused by humans
affects bee species richness and density. <br>
<br>
Williams used an experimental approach to understand the landscape-scale
ecology of native bumblebees. He and his colleagues established 38
bee colonies across central California, ranging from undisturbed
chaparral to organic and conventional farms. During the course of the
summer months, they found that the further a colony was from natural
areas, the fewer worker bees it sustained. Williams’ team also found that
bees always collected pollen from both crops and native plants. Since
crop fields aren’t in bloom for the entire bee active season, Williams
says, the bees need an adequate alternative source of nectar and pollen,
and may travel several kilometers to find it. Therefore, a mosaic
landscape that has natural areas mixed in with agriculture is important
to keep bee colonies healthy.<br>
<br>
“Today’s landscape is both natural and managed,” says Williams. “It’s not
just matrix of natural areas with agriculture mixed in, but a patchwork
quilt with animals using all of the areas in the landscape.” <br>
<br>
Other presenters in this session include Juliet Osborne of the Centre for
Soils and Ecosystem Function, United Kingdom, who will speak about bee
movement patterns and pollen flow; Yukari Suzuki-Ohno of Tokohu
University, Japan, who will discuss bee nest site choice; Margarita
Lopez-Uribe of Cornell University, who will talk about the ecology of
gene flow among bee populations; Marcos G.E. Da Luz of Universidade
Federal do Paraná, Brazil, who will discuss how bees search for food
sources; Helen J. Young of Middlebury College, who will discuss human
land use and its relationship to bee flower visitation; Ralph Grundel of
the U.S. Geological Survey, who will speak about the landscape ecology of
bee community composition; and Berry Brosi of Stanford University, who
will talk about bee floral fidelity. <br>
<br>
For more information about this session and other ESA Annual Meeting
activities, visit
<a href="http://www.esa.org/milwaukee">http://www.esa.org/milwaukee</a>
. The theme of the meeting is “Enhancing Ecological Thought by
Linking Research and Education.” More than 3,500 scientists are expected
to attend.<br>
<br>
<br>
<i> <br>
</i><br>
<i>The Ecological Society of America is the world’s largest professional
organization of ecologists, representing 10,000 scientists in the United
States and around the globe. Since its founding in 1915, ESA has promoted
the responsible application of ecological principles to the solution of
environmental problems through ESA reports, journals, research, and
expert testimony to Congress. ESA publishes four journals and convenes an
annual scientific conference. Visit the ESA website at
<a href="http://www.esa.org/">http://www.esa.org</a>.<br>
</i> <br>
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