Mystery of flowers with two anthers solved, monarchs on verge of extinction, and wildfires result in more female bees.
Conservation
(Xerces Society) During the 24th Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count, nearly 100 volunteers donned their masks and practiced social distancing to carefully survey groves of trees on the California and Northern Baja coast for monarch butterflies. Despite the challenges of conducting field work during a pandemic, volunteers surveyed 246 sites, three more sites than last year. Unfortunately, to the surprise and dismay of many, only 1,914 monarchs were counted at all the sites. This is a shocking 99.9% decline since the 1980s.
Bees respond to wildfire aftermath by producing more female offspring
(Oregon State University) Researchers have found that the blue orchard bee produces female offspring at higher rates in the aftermath of wildfire in forests. The more severe the fire had been, the greater percentage of females – more than 10% greater in the most badly burned areas relative to areas that burned the least severely.
Urban Biodiversity and the Importance of Scale
(Twitter, Andy Gonzalez @bio_diverse) “Cool paper!... A framework to study how scale influences biodiversity through eco-evolutionary and socioeconomic mechanisms, and how these relationships might guide biodiversity management in urban areas.” The original paper.
Policy/Law
President Joe Biden starts process to restore Utah’s national monuments
(Salt Lake Tribune) Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments may soon be enlarged. Acting on a pledge he made as a candidate, President Joe Biden on Wednesday initiated a first step toward restoring the boundaries of the two formerly large Utah national monuments that Donald Trump had reduced by 2 million acres as a political favor to Utah politicians. Grand Staircase-Escalante is home to at least 660 species of bees – nearly the same number of bee species found in all states and provinces east of the Mississippi River.
(Center for Biological Diversity) The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s request to allow farmers to continue using the pesticide sulfoxaflor while the agency assessed the pesticide’s harm to endangered species.
A new license plate in Minnesota
(Twitter, Christopher E. Smith @FieldEcology) “New Critical Habitat Plate released and features both the Minnesota state bee and butterfly.”
Science
Study of flowers with two types of anthers solves mystery that baffled Darwin
(University of California, Santa Cruz) A team of researchers has described a pollination strategy involving flowers with two distinct sets of anthers that differ in color, size, and position. Darwin was mystified by such flowers, lamenting in a letter that he had “wasted enormous effort over them, and cannot yet get a glimpse of the meaning of the parts.” Through a variety of greenhouse and field experiments, the team showed that heteranthery is a way for flowers to gradually present their pollen to bees over multiple visits.
Common pesticides stop flies and bees from getting a good night's sleep
(EurekAlert, University of Bristol) Just like us, many insects need a decent night’s sleep to function properly, but this might not be possible if they have been exposed to neonicotinoid insecticides. “Bees and flies have similar structures in their brains, and this suggests one reason why these drugs are so bad for bees is they stop the bees from sleeping properly and then being able to learn where food is in their environment.”
Beeporter: a high-throughput tool for non-invasive analysis of honey bee virus infection
(Twitter, Jay Evans @JayDEvans88) “New ways to watch viruses in bee and other insects” The original paper.
Discovery and description of hospicidal first instar
(Twitter, Thomas Onuferko @TOnuferko) “Check out this tiny first instar of the cleptoparasitic bee... Those unusually long sickle-shaped mandibles are used to destroy any eggs or other larvae within the host's brood cell.” The original paper.
Society/Culture
UC Davis postdoc wins inaugural Bumble-Bee-of-the-Year Contest
(Daily Democrat) A UC Davis postdoctoral researcher who studied with global bumble bee authority Robbin Thorp is fittingly the winner of the Bohart Museum of Entomology’s inaugural Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble-Bee-of-the-Year Contest. Charlie Casey Nicholson photographed a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, in a manzanita patch in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden to claim the honor.
One More Thing…
“I tweeted about this melanistic Bombus nevadensis from SK last year. In 1908, Franklin identified ‘a magnificent melanic specimen, the whole body uniformly black’ from High River, AB; hope to track down that specimen!” From Cory Silas Sheffield @CorySilas via Twitter.