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Bug Bites
Bumblebees Chew Leaves to Hasten Pollen Production
When trying to establish colonies in early spring, bees rely on flower pollen as a protein source for raising their young. Consuelo De Moraes, a chemical ecologist and entomologist at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich, in Switzerland, reported in Science that at least three species of bumblebees use their mouth parts to snip little confetti bits out of plant foliage, and that the biting gets more widespread when there’s a pollen shortage. Experiments show that mustard and tomato plants nibbled by Bombus terrestris bees bloomed earlier than unbitten plants by days or weeks. In a caged-bee test, bumblebees trapped with non-blooming plants were more likely to poke holes in foliage after three days without pollen than a bee group buzzing among plentiful flowers. When researchers switched the bees’ situations, those trapped without blooms started nibbling leaves, too. Professor of Biology Dave Goulson, at the University of Sussex, in England, says, “I can imagine that hungry bees unable to find flowers might try biting leaves in desperation.”
Hot Topic
Tropical Forests Face Climate Change Risk
Tropical forests remove and absorb carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, and researchers estimate that despite current deforestation levels, they still hold more carbon than civilization has generated by burning coal, oil and natural gas over the past 30 years. But as trees stressed by heat and drought due to global warming die and release their carbon, their ability to act as reservoirs will diminish. A global team of more than 200 researchers led by tropical ecologist Oliver Phillips, of Leeds University, measured more than half a million trees in 813 forests in 24 countries to calculate how much carbon the different forests now store, based on the height, diameter and species of each tree. Their research, published in Science, also looked at how carbon storage varied from place to place using data from 590 long-term monitoring plots. If warming reaches 2° C above preindustrial levels, the study found huge swaths of the world’s tropical forests will begin to lose more carbon than they accumulate. Already, the hottest forests in South America have reached that point.
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August 2020
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