Experts attribute some of the declines to habitat loss or pesticide use but warn that climate change poses new risks..
with temperatures reaching 100 degrees that have amassed attention this summer, can contribute to low abundance, he said.“Your plants need water to be happy, so when we have these really dry conditions, it usually means the plants are under stress. When plants are under stress they tend to not do as well and one part of that is producing flowers for reproduction,” CaraDonna said. “Many pollinators rely on the flowers exclusively for food.
He said two species worked to fill the “ecological void” — bombus impatiens and bombus bimaculatus — better known as the common eastern bumblebee and two-spotted bumblebee, respectively.“It’s something a lot of people wouldn’t notice,” he said. “Unless you know bumblebees, you wouldn’t realize that what was once a lot of different species has now been replaced to just a couple species.”
Population declines are troubling, CaraDonna said, because pollinators are ecologically and economically important. They pollinate crops that humans rely on, as well as plants in the natural ecosystem, he said. According to the U.S. Forest Service, almost 80% of crop plants grown around the world require pollination by animals, meaning humans couldn’t survive without pollinators.
Even though it might seem counterproductive at first, CaraDonna advises against building honeybee colonies. Honeybees are known to take resources from and carry diseases that can infect native bees, such as the rusty patched or common eastern bumblebees, suppressing their populations.Barbara Williams carries an insect net and looks for bees, dragonflies and other insects in Deer Run Forest Preserve on Aug. 16, 2023, in Cherry Valley.
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