Climate change and global warming are very pressing issues within the environmental scope of our world. With record high temperatures, dangerous CO2 emissions, and unpredictable weather changes, our ecosystem is in great danger. Not only as humans are we in danger, but the other animals in our ecosystem are even more volatile to the unpredictable changes caused by climate change. As humans, we have many fail-safes to combat the changing environment, but other animals will die off easily because climate change accelerates the changes in the environment and does not give the other animals time to adapt.
One example of animals that are affected by the negative externalities of climate change is the bumblebees. Bumblebees are vital to many ecosystems as they use pollen to fertilize many florae and crucial crops like tomatoes, blueberries, and squash (Morin). Recently, due to climate change effects, their population numbers have been dropping. Compared to 1974, at any place in the United States of America, you are 50% less likely to find a bumblebee (Morin). Also, many of the original places of certain types of bumblebees the population of that type of bee are now totally extinct and those bees are endangered in the areas they do exist. For example, the rusty patched bumblebee origin place was Canada, but now they are extinct in Canada and endangered in America (Morin).
In a paper published by the journal Science, researchers used complex modeling to determine what the main causes of the large decline of bumblebees are and the results should that the decline was mainly due to climate change (Morin). The journal says that in areas that have become hotter in the last generation or have had “extreme temperature swings”, the bumblebees are less common. In Europe, they have even dropped 17 percent from only about 20 years ago (Morin). The study leader Peter Soroye, a doctoral student at the University of Ottawa, says, “These declines are linked to species being pushed beyond temperatures they haven’t previously had to tolerate (Morin).”
Not only would the high-temperature swings be bad for the livelihood of most animals, but bumblebees are especially susceptible to the high temperatures. These creatures are known to be more suited for cold weather because of their fuzzy bodies which allow them to generate heat while flying (Morin). The exact amount of vulnerability these bees have to warmer temperatures is not known, but it is known that there is a limit to the adaptability that these bees have. Also, these temperature swings and hotter weather are not just regular cyclical changes. These hot temperatures are record-breaking each year, the last five years were the hottest on record in the past 139 years as tracked by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Morin).
These bumblebees are also dying in multiple ways to climate change effects. One way is that these insects can simply overheat. The other way is that climate change can have indirect impacts on vegetation and flowers that will lead to the starving of the bees (Morin). Bees can also be affected by high winds that are caused by global heating. With no wind, bees on average can take nectar from 5.45 flowers during a 90-second time trial (Barkham). With winds increased, the average fell to 3.73 flowers. Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex, says, “Insect pollinators already face many pressures in the modern world, such as loss of habitat and exposure to pesticides, and a great many are in decline. Coping with increasingly blustery weather under climate change may be the final straw for some (Barkham).”
When these bees die in mass quantity to climate change there are many indirect and direct consequences as bees are an important part of many ecosystems. The most obvious reason being that bees need to pollinate flowers and without the bees, the flowers never get pollinated. This creates multiple chain reactions within the ecosystem and with the decline of bumblebees, there could potentially be major biodiversity loss. Economically, “bees contribute more than $15 billion” to the economy by pollinating crops (Morin).
Climate change and global warming can be a massive problem for any living species on this earth, some more than others. If change is not enacted sooner to help the decline of negative climate change effects, species like the important bumblebee will become extinct.
Barkham, Patrick. “Bees May Struggle in Winds Caused by Global Warming, Study Finds.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 18 Feb. 2020, www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/18/bees-may-struggle-in-winds-caused-by-global-warming-study-finds.
Morin, Antoine. “Bumblebees Are Going Extinct in a Time of ‘Climate Chaos’.” National Geographic, 6 Feb. 2020, www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/02/bumblebees-going-extinct-climate-change-pesticides/.