Canadian and British researchers who have been studying 115yrs of data on 66 bumblebee species across North America and Europe have linked rising temperatures directly to the decline of 66 bumblebee species and are now predicting they will be wiped out completely in decades if immediate action isn’t taken.
The report, published in Science magazine, demonstrated that the data even allowed scientists to accurately predict local extinctions for any given species, based on their levels of tolerance/intolerance to rising temperatures.
To announce this as a mass extinction event is by no means an exaggeration. As the world’s pollinators, a decline in bumblebee populations has a direct impact on entire ecosystems, as well as agricultural crops.
Senior author, Professor Jeremy Kerr of the University of Ottawa, stressed the importance of taking every action possible to reduce emissions in order to tackle climate change and avert disaster while, at the same time, doing everything we can to maintain habitats that would offer shelter “like trees, shrubs, or slopes, that could let bumblebees get out of the heat.”
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