The majority of the Earth’s plant species rely on animal pollinators to reproduce, and our modern agricultural industry is heavily reliant on honey bees. Feral honey bees, which are non-native and often escape human management, can perturb native ecosystems when they become abundant. A new study by University of California San Diego biologists is calling attention to the threat posed by these feral honey bees to native pollinators in Southern California.

The researchers found that honey bees remove about 80% of pollen during the first day a flower opens, leaving scant resources for native bees. If the pollen and nectar used to create honey bee biomass were instead converted to native bees, populations of native bees would be expected to be roughly 50 times larger than they are currently.

While public concern often focuses on the plight of the honey bee, researchers say that such a level of honey bee exploitation is not well documented. This can pose an additional and important threat to native bee populations in places where honey bees have become abundant.

The study used pollen-removal experiments to estimate the amount of pollen extracted by honey bees using three common native plants as targeted pollen sources. The researchers found that just two visits by honey bees removed more than 60% of available pollen from flowers of all three species.

One step to address this situation could be increased guidance on whether and where large-scale contract beekeepers are allowed to keep their hives on public lands after crops have bloomed, to limit opportunities for honey bees to outcompete native species for scarce resources provided by native vegetation.

The buzz on bees has long been a topic of interest, but recent research is shedding new light on how environmental change affects their communication and pollination abilities. Scientists have found that high temperatures and exposure to heavy metals can reduce the frequency and pitch of non-flight wing vibrations in bees, which could have significant consequences for their role as pollinators.

Dr. Charlie Woodrow, a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University, has been studying the effect of environmental change on bee buzzes. He notes that people often don’t realize that bees use their flight muscles for functions other than flight, such as communication and defense. One important function is buzz-pollination, which involves a bee curling its body around the pollen-concealing anthers of flowers and contracting its flight muscles up to 400 times per second to produce vibrations that shake loose the pollen.

Dr. Woodrow’s experiments involved using accelerometers to measure the frequency of the buzz, which corresponds to the audible pitch. He also used thermal imaging to show how bees deal with the extra heat generated by their buzzing. The research has found that temperature plays a vital role in determining the properties of a bee’s buzz, and exposure to heavy metals can reduce the contraction frequencies of the flight muscles during non-flight buzzing.

The benefits of understanding the impact of environmental change on a bee’s buzz include unique insights into bee ecology and behavior, helping to identify species or regions most at risk, and improving AI-based species detection based on sound recordings. Dr. Woodrow suggests that buzzes could even be used as a marker of stress or environmental change.

The research also has implications for robotics and the future safeguarding of pollination services. Dr. Woodrow is working towards understanding bee vibrations through micro-robotics, so their results are also going towards developing micro-robots to understand pollen release.

Overall, the buzz on bees is more than just a curiosity; it’s an important aspect of their ecology that can provide valuable insights into environmental change and its impact on pollination services.

The Fig Trees That Fight Climate Change: A Revolutionary Carbon-Sequestering Mechanism

In a groundbreaking discovery, researchers have found that certain species of fig trees possess an extraordinary ability – they can turn themselves into stone, literally. This remarkable phenomenon, known as the oxalate-carbonate pathway, allows these trees to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the surrounding soil as calcium carbonate rocks.

The research team, comprising scientists from Kenya, the US, Austria, and Switzerland, has been studying this unique ability of fig trees. They found that by using CO2 to create calcium oxalate crystals, which are then converted into calcium carbonate by specialized bacteria or fungi, these trees can sequester inorganic carbon more effectively than their counterparts that store organic carbon.

Dr. Mike Rowley, a senior lecturer at the University of Zurich, is leading the research effort. He explained that while trees have long been recognized for their ability to absorb CO2 through photosynthesis, the oxalate-carbonate pathway offers an additional benefit – the sequestration of inorganic carbon in the form of calcium carbonate.

This discovery has significant implications for climate change mitigation efforts. By choosing trees with this unique ability for agroforestry, we can not only produce food but also sequester more CO2 from the atmosphere. The team’s research highlights the potential for these trees to play a crucial role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The study, which was presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Prague, focused on three species of fig trees grown in Samburu County, Kenya. The researchers identified how far from the tree the calcium carbonate was being formed and identified the microbial communities involved in the process.

One of the key findings was that Ficus wakefieldii, a specific type of fig tree, was the most effective at sequestering CO2 as calcium carbonate. The team is now planning to assess the suitability of this tree for agroforestry by quantifying its water requirements and fruit yields and conducting a more detailed analysis of how much CO2 can be sequestered under different conditions.

This research has far-reaching implications, not only for climate change mitigation but also for our understanding of the complex relationships between trees, microorganisms, and the environment. As Dr. Rowley noted, “There are many more species of trees that can form calcium carbonate, so this pathway could be a significant, underexplored opportunity to help mitigate CO2 emissions as we plant trees for forestry or fruit.”