The speed of climate change is unbalancing the insect world. NJ passes legislation to limit use of pesticides. Bush tomato fools bees with ‘fake’ pollen. Do pollinators prefer dense flower patches?
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Conservation
Photo: Getty Images
How the speed of climate change is unbalancing the insect world
(The Guardian) The climate crisis is set to profoundly alter the world around us. Humans will not be the only species to suffer from the calamity. Huge waves of die-offs will be triggered across the animal kingdom as coral reefs turn ghostly white and tropical rainforests collapse. For a period, some researchers suspected that insects may be less affected, or at least more adaptable, than mammals, birds and other groups of creatures. With their large, elastic populations and their defiance of previous mass extinction events, surely insects will do better than most in the teeth of the climate emergency?
(National Biodiversity Data Center) “Ultimately, the similarity between pollinator communities of the two meadow types indicates that doing less may be doing more in terms of providing resources for insect-pollinators within urban environments. Simply reducing the mowing frequency to create a mini-meadow within an urban environment can provide resources for insect pollinators, while being cost-effective and less labour-intensive than sowing a site with a seed mix.”
Monarch butterfly conservation efforts improve. Are they enough?
(E&E News) Monarch butterflies are having a moment – in court, on Capitol Hill and across the countryside. Some migrating populations are up from 2020’s devastating lows. Congress is kicking in more money. Endangered Species Act legal settlement talks are underway. And over it all loom the far-flung consequences if the conservation efforts fall short and monarch butterflies end up, after all, requiring federal protections under the ESA. “Imagine if the monarch is listed. The impact on farms across the country would be massive.”
Economics
New Zealand government releases handbook about planting to feed the bees
(Rural News) New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries has released a handbook offering guidance on how to plant strategically to feed bees. The document, which is being offered free to farmers, brings together knowledge from 10 years of field and laboratory research by the New Zealand Trees for Bees Research Trust, with significant financial support from MPI and other funders.
Policy/Law
Photo: Niagara, Wikimedia Commons
New Jersey Assembly passes legislation to limit uses of pesticides
(Environment America) The New Jersey Assembly passed legislation (S1016/A2070) by a 54-22 vote on Monday to classify neonicotinoid as restricted use pesticides. If Gov. Phil Murphy signs the measure, New Jersey will become the sixth state to adopt this type of save-the-bees policy. The legislation limits pesticide applications in non-agricultural settings such as gardens, lawns and golf courses, which are the primary places the pesticides are used in New Jersey.
Who’s trying to save the rusty patched bumble bee from extinction? Not federal officials.
(Chicago Tribune) “One of the bees in the worst trouble is the rusty patched bumblebee. That’s why in January 2017, following a legal petition and two lawsuits by conservation groups, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed it as endangered. That decision enabled the agency to bring the full weight of the Endangered Species Act to prevent the bee’s extinction. At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Although the bee’s population has declined by 87%, five years later, federal officials have consistently refused to do what it takes to reverse this bee’s plunge toward extinction.”
(Twitter, John M. Mola @_JohnMola) “Who’s a federal official? It’s federal scientists, fed employees, that are in fact...working to save RPBB (+uni and NGO partners). The fed gov’t is kinda big. Maybe don't lump together?”
Photo: Robert Nemeth
(Twitter, Cllr Robert Nemeth @robert_nemeth) “A bee brick - now compulsory in Brighton & Hove on new buildings after I raised issue at Council. Big victory.” Story from March, 2020
White House plan aims to protect science from politics
(E&E News) The White House released a wide-ranging plan to strengthen the work of government scientists and protect them from political meddling. The document from the Office of Science and Technology Policy aims to create a “broad culture of scientific integrity,” extending beyond scientists to include people who make high-level policy decisions and communicate research to the public. The plan also seeks to impose consequences on senior officials who break the rules. “This report is a comprehensive Federal assessment of what’s needed to protect science – and scientists and technologists – within the U.S. government, and a clear government-wide policy statement calling for decision-making at all levels to be informed by science without interference.”
Science
Photo: Mark Marathon, Wikimedia Commons
Bush tomato fools bees with ‘fake’ female pollen
(Bucknell University) Consider it an act of botanical bluffing. The unisexual Australian bush tomato has both beautiful purple and yellow male and female flowers, but cross-pollination between each sex by bees is necessary for the plant’s survival. Bucknell University research has now found that while both the male and female flowers produce pollen, the females somehow “fool” bees by producing a less-wholesome or “fake” pollen that looks like its male counterparts but lacks the same nutritional reward. “But why would a bee ever go visit those female plants if the pollen wasn't worth as much? This is the mystery we are left with at this point.”
Do pollinators prefer dense flower patches? Sometimes yes, sometimes no
(Entomology Today) Historically, entomologists have concluded that bees and other pollinators select flowering plants according to the density of those plants in a given location. This makes some economic sense, since foraging in large areas of the same flowers reduces flight time (and thus energy) between flowers. But other research has shown that pollinator visits do not decrease when isolated from same-species plants, suggesting that flowers in dense formations compete for pollinators. Understanding how pollinators are attracted to plants is important to seeing how different species of bees can exist together in the same pollen-producing environment. In a new study, scientists found a large degree of variation in pollinator visitation when analyzed simply by density of flower patches. The type of flower appeared to have an effect on pollinator visitation, as did the type of pollinator.
California mice eat monarch butterflies
(ScienceDaily, University of Utah) At the largest winter monarch aggregation in central Mexico, scientists have observed that rodents attack monarchs that fall to the ground. Biologists have now discovered that the western harvest mouse also eats grounded monarchs. Documenting this new feeding behavior is a reminder of little we know about the interactions that may be lost as insect populations decline.
Researchers switch off gene to switch on ultraviolet in butterfly wings
(ScienceDaily, George Washington University) Researchers have identified a gene that determines whether ultraviolet iridescence shows up in the wings of butterflies. The team showed that removing the gene in butterflies whose wings lack UV coloration leads to bright patches of UV iridescence in their wings. According to the researchers, the gene plays a critical role in the evolutionary process by which species become distinct from one another.
See stunning fossils of insects, fish and plants from an ancient Australian forest
(Science News) A new trove of plant, insect, fish and other fossils offers an unprecedented snapshot of Australia’s wetter, forest-dominated past. McGraths Flat in New South Wales contains thousands of beautifully preserved specimens of flowering plants, ferns, spiders, insects and fish. Images of the fossils’ soft tissues, captured with scanning electron microscopy, reveal them in astonishing detail, from a parasitoid wasp to phantom midges trapped in a fish’s stomach.
Society/Culture
Image: Bees in the D
Nonprofit to open botanical garden, education center in Detroit for bees, pollinator conservation
(ClickOnDetroit) Bees in the D, a local nonprofit group, is planning to open Detroit’s first educational community center and Michigan native botanical gardens dedicated to the conservation of pollinators. The center and garden will be dedicated to the conservation of native bees, honey bees, butterflies and other pollinators. It will be constructed from up-cycled shipping containers and house around 100,000 honey bees on the roof. It’ll be called the Michigan Pollinator Center. It will also serve as the new headquarters for Bees in the D.
Technology
Photo: Elizabeth Clare
Scientists ID dozens of plants, animals from free-floating DNA
(The Scientist) In a trio of studies, researchers report capturing and analyzing airborne environmental DNA from a wide variety of plants and animals, suggesting a new way of monitoring which terrestrial species are present in an area.
One More Thing…
Ovipositor of a steely-blue wood wasp, Sirex juvencus. From Thorben Danke @sagaOptics via Twitter.