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Entomologist on mission to save Franklin's Bumble Bee <br><br>
Date: 2010-07-27<br>
Contact: Kathy Keatley Garvey<br>
Phone: 530-754-6894<br>
Email: <a href="mailto:kegarvey@ucdavis.edu">kegarvey@ucdavis.edu</a>
<br><br>
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<img src="http://www.ucop.edu/newsroom/newswire/img/10/10252038154c4f5c7542d81.jpg" width=246 height=160 alt=" Robbin Thorp">
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<b>Robbin Thorp</b> <br><br>
Native pollinator specialist
<a href="http://beebiology.ucdavis.edu/PEOPLE/robbinthorp.html">Robbin
Thorp</a> of the University of California, Davis, hopes that the
critically imperiled Franklin's bumble bee will soon be listed as an
"endangered species" under the Endangered Species Act.
<br><br>
"It may already be extinct, but I am hopeful that it is still
out there ‘under the radar,'" said Thorp, a noted bumble bee
authority and an emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis. "I
haven't seen a Franklin's bumble bee since August 2006 and that was a
single, solitary worker at Mt. Ashland." <br><br>
In 1998 Thorp began intensive annual monitoring of Franklin's bumble bee
in its narrow distribution range of southern Oregon and northern
California. That first year he counted 100. <br><br>
Then the population began declining precipitously, which Thorp
hypothesizes may be due to an exotic disease spread from commercial
bumble bee colonies to wild bumble bee populations. His scientific
surveys, conducted three to five times a year, several days each time,
showed only three Franklin's bumble bees in 2003, one in 2006, and none
since then. <br><br>
He will return to the area in late July and again in mid-August for more
monitoring. <br><br>
"The decline of Franklin's bumble bee is a signal that something is
wrong in its environment," said Thorp, a member of the California
Academy of Sciences since 1986. "This is the canary-in-the-coal-mine
measure." <br><br>
The bumble bee, mostly black, has distinctive yellow markings on the
front of its thorax and top of its head. It has a solid black abdomen
with just a touch of white at the tip, and an inverted U-shaped design
between its wing bases. <br><br>
"Franklin's bumble bee has the smallest range of distribution of any
of our 60 species of North American bumble bees, and perhaps of the 250
bumble bees in the world," Thorp said. Its range covers about 190
miles north-south and 70 miles east-west. The known distribution includes
Siskiyou and Trinity counties in California, and Jackson, Douglas and
Josephine counties in Oregon. <br><br>
"This bumble bee is partly at risk because of its very small range
of distribution," he said. "Adverse effects within this narrow
range can have a much greater effect on it than on more widespread bumble
bees." <br><br>
On June 23, Thorp and <a href="http://www.xerces.org/">The Xerces Society
for Invertebrate Conservation</a>, headquartered in Portland, Ore.,
petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect Franklin's
bumble bee (Bombus franklini) by listing it in the Endangered Species
Act. Enacted in 1973, the Endangered Species Act seeks to protect
critically imperiled plant and animal life from extinction. Secondly, it
aims to recover and maintain those populations by removing or lessening
threats to their survival. A species may decline due to habitat
destruction or modification; disease or predation; or other reasons.
<br><br>
A decision on Franklin's bumble bee is expected within 90 days. <br><br>
If it's given protective status, this could "stimulate research into
the probable causes of its decline," said Thorp, an active member of
The Xerces Society. "This may not only lead to its recovery, but
also help us better understand environmental threats to pollinators and
how to prevent them in future. This petition also serves as a wake-up
call to the importance of pollinators and the need to provide protections
from the various threats to the health of their populations."
<br><br>
Since the petition announcement, reaction from the public has ranged from
strong approval to outright negativity: "Why do we need more bumble
bees-we already have a lot of bumble bees." <br><br>
"Yes, I am getting quite a few responses, some with photos
carpenter bees, yellow-faced bumble bees but none of B. franklini
yet," he said. Some contacts blame the decline on "chemical
gases and dust, cell phone towers and nuclear war testing," he said.
<br><br>
Said Thorp: "People often ask the value of Franklin's bumble bee. In
terms of a direct contribution to the grand scale of human economies,
perhaps not much, but no one has measured its contribution in those
terms. However, in the grand scheme of our planet and its environmental
values, I would say it is priceless." <br><br>
"Loss of a species, especially a pollinator, diminishes our global
environment," he said. "Bumble bees provide an important
ecological service pollination. This service is critical to
reproduction of a huge diversity of plants that in turn provide shelter,
food (seeds, fruits) to diverse wildlife. The potential cascade of
effects from the removal of even one localized pollinator may affect us
directly and indirectly." <br><br>
Some wonder if it's too late to provide protection for a species that may
already be extinct. <br><br>
"Other species, especially plants and insects, thought to be extinct
have reappeared after years of not being seen," the UC Davis
scientist said. "When populations of species are in decline, they
may reach such low levels that they are not detected for several years in
a row, despite intensive surveys, flying under the radar so to speak. It
is my hope that this is the case with Franklin's bumble bee."
<br><br>
"One positive sign," Thorp said, "comes from increasing
finds the past two years of a related species, the Western bumble bee,
which exhibited similar declines at the same time and places. If these
recent sightings are a sign of recovery for the Western bumble bee, I am
hopeful that similar recovery will be found with Franklin's bumble bee.'
<br><br>
Loss of habitat and the increased use of pesticides are partly to blame
for the bumble bee population decline, Thorp said, but he suspects that a
fungus, Nosema bombi, may be the main culprit. Other bumble bee
populations in peril are the western bumble bee and the rusty-patched
bumble bee in the West, and the yellow-banded bumble bee in the
Northeast. <br><br>
As part of a collaborative USDA grant to research his hypothesis, Thorp
returned July 5 from a two-week research trip to southern France. He and
colleague Sydney Cameron of the University of Illinois and Cameron's
post-doctoral researcher, Jeff Lozier, who received his doctorate in
entomology from UC Berkeley, collected Bombus terrestris for pathogen
studies. <br><br>
They also traveled with professor Pierre Rasmont of the University of
Mons in Belgium, a noted authority on bumble bees of the western
Palaearctic. "He showed us the collection sites for the original
commercial stocks of Bombus terrestris in southern France," Thorp
said. <br><br>
Known for his expertise on bumble bees, Thorp served as one of the
keynote speakers at a public symposium on "The Plight of the Bumble
Bee" in June 2009 at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
His topic: "Western Bumble Bees in Peril." <br><br>
Earlier this year, The Xerces Society petitioned the USDA's Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service (APHS) to protect wild bumble bees from
the threat of diseases brought in by commercial bumble bees. Xerces seeks
to "prohibit the shipment of commercial bumble bees outside of their
native ranges and to regulate the interstate transport of commercial
bumble bees within their native ranges by requiring permits that show
that bumble bees are certified as disease-free prior to movement,"
according to a recent press release. . <br><br>
Like Thorp, Xerces Society officials are adamant that Franklin's bumble
bee be saved. <br><br>
"It is vital that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service act quickly to
protect this bumble bee," said Sarina Jepsen, The Xerces Society's
endangered species program director who holds a master's degree in
entomology from UC Davis. "We hope that an Endangered Species Act
listing will encourage the USDA-APHIS to protect wild bumble bees from
future threats posed by nonnative commercial bumble bees." <br><br>
Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of The Xerces Society, said the
decline of Franklin's bumble bee should serve as an alarm "that we
are starting to lose important pollinators. We hope that Franklin's
bumble bee will remind us to prevent pollinators across the United States
from sliding toward extinction." <br><br>
The Xerces Society plans to issue more petitions to protect native bumble
bees. <br><br>
(Editor's Note:
<a href="http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/webcastlinks.html">Watch
Robbin Thorp's webcast on Franklin's bumble bee</a>. See
<a href="http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/images/franklinbumblebeelarge.jpg">
enlarged image</a> of Franklin's bumble bee, in photo taken by Robbin
Thorp.) <br><br>
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*************************<br>
Scott Hoffman Black<br>
Ecologist/Entomologist<br>
Executive Director<br>
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation<br>
4828 SE Hawthorne <br>
Portland, OR 97215 <br>
Direct line (503) 449-3792<br>
sblack@xerces.org<br><br>
<i>The Xerces Society is an international, nonprofit organization that
protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their
habitat. <br>
</i> <br>
To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our work, <br>
please visit
<a href="http://www.xerces.org/">www.xerces.org</a>.<br><br>
<br>
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