Heat waves don’t just make bumblebees hot. The high temperatures also seem to drastically reduce their sense of smell — with possible negative effects on the survival of colonies.
As climate change is expected to increase the severity and frequency of heat waves, “the animals need to find a way to adapt somehow to cope with this,” says Nooten, of the University of Würzburg in Germany.
Bumblebees are known to suffer from climate change (SN: 7/9/15). A thick and furry body makes these insects well adapted to thrive in Earth’s coldest regions. But being cold-resistant in a warming world can turn fatal. So Nooten and her team wanted to understand whether heat waves could also impact the ability of bumblebees to smell flowers.
The researchers exposed around 190 individuals of two common bumblebee species (Bombus terrestris and B. pascuorum) to simulated heat waves by placing the bees in tubes for almost three hours at temperatures of 40° Celsius. A subset were also put in a dry environment, some had access to sugary resources, and some were given time to recover at ambient temperatures for 24 hours after the heat treatment.
2024-09-06 10:00:00
Article from www.sciencenews.org