[Pollinator] NYT: Loss of Bees Can Affect Plants' Ability to Reproduce, Study Finds

[Jennifer Tsang]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/science/loss-of-bees-can-affect-plants-abi
lity-to-reproduce-study-finds.html?_r=0

 

 <http://www.nytimes.com/>  <http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/>  <http://www.nytimes.com/> 




  _____  

July 22, 2013


Loss of Bees Can Affect Plants' Ability to Reproduce, Study Finds


By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/james_gorman/i
ndex.html> JAMES GORMAN


The loss of bees and other pollinators around the world is already cause for
concern. Now two researchers who studied bumblebees in Colorado have added a
new worry, identifying the perils of bumblebee infidelity not to other bees,
but to their floral partners. 

Berry J. Brosi, an assistant professor at Emory University in Atlanta, and
Heather M. Briggs, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa
Cruz, both in environmental science, studied 20 plots of meadow at the Rocky
Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte, Colo., each about 22 yards
on a side. 

With help from a number of students they tested what happened if they
removed the most populous bumblebee species by catching them with butterfly
nets, and patrolled the plots to keep them out. 

The prevailing view, Dr. Brosi said, based on mathematical models, was that
all the other bumblebee species would take up the slack and the plants would
do fine. But that was not so for the tall larkspur, a lovely purple
wildflower. 

Researchers found that the remaining bumblebees became less faithful to one
flower species than they had been before the removal of the most numerous
bees. They took advantage of less competition to play the field, or the
plot. 

All well and good for the bees, at least in the short term, but the
larkspur, which the researchers targeted for this study, did not do as well
because bees that once would have stuck with the larkspur now carried pollen
from a variety of other flowers when they visited their once exclusive
floral partner. 

But the larkspur needs pollen from its own species to reproduce and suffered
for the bumblebees' wayward ways. 

Because of the unfaithful bees, the researchers reported Monday in
Proceedings <http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1307438110>  of the
National Academy of Sciences, plants produced about 30 percent less seed.
The finding, they report, shows a surprising effect from a loss of
biodiversity that could have implications for a variety of ecosystems. 

 

Jennifer Tsang

Marketing Director

Pollinator Partnership

www.pollinator.org 

423 Washington St. 5th Fl.

San Francisco, CA 94111

T: 415.362.1137

F: 415.362.3070

 <http://pollinator.org/SHARE.htm> 

 

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