Climate Change - Bumblebees being completely WIPED OUT of warmer regions

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Bumblebees can't move north to cope with warmer temperatures, and climate change is wiping them out in many areas where they lived several decades ago, a Canadian-led study suggests

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The researchers from Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Belgium analysed a database of 423,000 observations of bees from museum and university collections around the world, along with more recent monitoring programs.

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"The rates of loss are very rapid and are nearly the same across continents," he said at a news conference organized by Science where the paper is being published today.

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Crushed in 'climate vise'

Bumblebees' lack of aptitude to cope with climate change could put them at risk of extinction if humans don't take action, the researchers suggest. Some species, such as North America's rusty-patched bumblebee, have already gone nearly extinct.

"We already know that extreme heat in southern Europe, for example, has wiped out local populations of some bumblebee species," said Kerr, a biology professor and research chair in macroecology at the University of Ottawa. "In this paper, we show that this mechanism may be operating across two continents to crush bumblebee species in a kind of climate vise."


http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-is-killing-off-bumblebees-study-1.3145014