Plight of the bumblebee

In a bid to curb the rapid decline in 10% of wild North American bumblebee species, international researchers have agreed on the key scientific priorities that will drive the next steps — including the establishment of a body to push forward research. The United States and Canada are home to about 50 species of native bumblebees (genus Bombus), which are important wild pollinators of fruit and vegetable crops. Several species have been domesticated and used for commercial pollination in tomato greenhouses. Honeybees tend to perform poorly in tomato pollination. But in the last three years, researchers have identified five North American species that have undergone a relatively swift population reduction since the 1990s, says Sydney Cameron, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. For example, the Bombus franklini worker bee was widespread in northern California and southern Oregon in 1998, but scientists conducting surveys in 2007 found only one, she says...more