The historically high heat waves that gripped the southwest United States and southern Europe this summer are causing problems for more than just humans. Extreme heat waves affect pollinators and the pathogens that live on them, creating a mutual imbalance that could have major economic and public health consequences.
A global research team led by Penn State was the first to study how extreme heat waves affect the host-pathogen relationship between two species of solitary bees and a protozoan pathogen . The researchers recently published their findings in the journalThe researchers found that the one-two punch of extreme heat exposure and prior infection led solitary bees, which account for over 90% of the roughly 4,000 species of bees in North America, to be less likely to forage for food.
In general, they found that the heat negatively impacted both the bee host and its pathogen, but the host bore the brunt of it. Exposure to heat decreased the bees' thermal boldness and their heat tolerance, whereas the pathogen's growth rate was only slightly negatively affected by heat. Solitary bees, often called the workhorses of the pollinator world due to their high foraging capacity, live for roughly a year, but are only active outside their nests for two to four weeks, for example, in early spring. They do a lifetime of pollinating in less than a month, Rajotte explained.
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