Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t The Register – A study published in Science claims that global warming is shortening the tongues of Bumble Bees, which may impact the ability of their tongues to reach the bottom of deep tube flowers.
The abstract of the study;
Functional mismatch in a bumble bee pollination mutualism under climate change
Ecological partnerships, or mutualisms, are globally widespread, sustaining agriculture and biodiversity. Mutualisms evolve through the matching of functional traits between partners, such as tongue length of pollinators and flower tube depth of plants. Long-tongued pollinators specialize on flowers with deep corolla tubes, whereas shorter-tongued pollinators generalize across tube lengths. Losses of functional guilds because of shifts in global climate may disrupt mutualisms and threaten partner species. We found that in two alpine bumble bee species, decreases in tongue length have evolved over 40 years. Co-occurring flowers have not become shallower, nor are small-flowered plants more prolific. We argue that declining floral resources because of warmer summers have favored generalist foraging, leading to a mismatch between shorter-tongued bees and the longer-tubed plants they once pollinated.
Read more: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6255/1541.abstract
The full study suggests that Theoretical and empirical studies alike suggest that with lower floral resources, fitness advantages of long-tongued specialist phenotypes have diminished, potentially driving the rapid evolution of shorter-tongued bees.
Even if we accept the premise of the study, that harsher conditions are strongly selecting for bees with shorter tongues, it seems curious that the alleged shortage of bees with long tongues, and the implicit inability of available bees to satisfactorily pollinate deep tube flowers, doesn’t seem to be forcing deep tube flowers to evolve shorter tubes.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So they measured the change in bees but have no corresponding measured change in the flowers, temp, or moisture, they just referred to other papers that predicted a change with global warming. This is conjecture at its finest
It’s not about tongues becoming shorter, it’s about flowers become bigger by CO2.
Difference! 🙂
By the way, why is this article tagged as “Science” and not as humor?
global warming is shortening the tongues of Bumble Bees — when there is no [insignificant] global warming; and the seasonal and annual variations in temperature range by 10 oC, can we call such studies scientific studies?? They are worth — dust bins.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Bees will fall to parasites before any effect from global warming. Sheesh what garbage. I have transported ~90,000 bees before in England back in the 90’s. No ill effects from the transport!
From the linked article;
“We used a nonlinear model to characterize the relationship between peak flower density (PFD; flowers per square meter) and summer minimum temperature.”
And 4 other times the word model was used.
It does not take a humongous observation power to notice that on this planet, the hotter it gets (because of seasons or because of being closer to the equator, or being lower in altitude) the more life we see, whether it’s plants or animals. We should be thankful for those “scientists” to explain in details that our observation is wrong and that a few degrees warmer will wipe out life…
The Little Ice Age hit the bee populations very hard. Sheesh.
Everything is ‘evil hot!’ to these lunatics all of whom refuse to move to Barrow, Alaska.
Say ahhh
IIRC, they feed bees in the winter with high fructose corn syrup. I wonder how far their probosces have to reach into the feeders to get to that? Maybe it’s not as far as in real flowers.
I didn’t think adjusted data would have that affect. What was it about the pause that would cause such a thing?
These bullshitters should be charged with misappropriation of taxpayers money, made to pay it back or go to prison! That’s what happens to the general public.
If you are someone who agrees with the projections of rapid climate change, this should be an encouraging finding. Isn’t it amazing that the morphology of the bee can change so dramatically in 40 years? Maybe organisms are far more resilient than we give them credit for and we don’t have to assume the worst even if the climate does change rapidly.
Research suggests that claiming that anything is linked to climate change increases the probability of funding by 100%