Milder winters and earlier spring weather has made many people climate-change converts. But the consequences to spring coming earlier than we are accustomed to has effects most people don't think about.

 

Spring temperatures have been increasing for the past 25 years, and most organisms have responded to the change. Just look at the flowers that start blooming earlier, the number of insects out and about. But scientists have started looking more closely at the responses organisms have to temperature-induced changes, and in particular pollination.

 

The researchers utilized a combination of modern-day research, old records and data from Victorian bee keepers dating back to 1848 in a unique research project. The project demonstrates for the first time how climate change threatens flower pollination and to a greater extent, the world's food supply.

 

Focusing on the early spider orchid (Ophrys sphegodes) and the Miner bee (Andrena nigroaenea) on which it depends for reproduction, the team discovered that the responses of the miner bee have become increasingly out-of-sync with the maturing orchid. They concluded that as spring temperatures have risen because of climate change, the warming has widened the time-line between flowers and bees emerging.

 

In an interesting discovery, the scientists found that when the spider orchid emerges, the male bees are drawn to the flower by the release of a sex pheromone smelling like a female miner bee. The male bee engages in pseudo-copulation with the flower while at the same time, pollinating the flower.

 

But records show that with the orchid emerging earlier because of a warming climate, the male bees are reaching maturity at slightly different times, due to the same changes in temperature, causing pseudo-copulation to get out-of-sync.

 

The information gleaned from the research has implications for the world's food supply. Three-fourths of all our food crops depend on pollination, not just from bees, bur other insects. These same pollinators have suffered greatly in the past few decades from disease, pesticides and loss of flowery habitat.

 

 

PHOTO: Andrena nigroaenaea from Commanster, Belgian High Ardennes.

CREDIT: James K. Lindsey.