This is impressive. A
predicted extinction event shows up nicely in the genetics. It also tells us that concurrent plant
extinctions did massively impact insect populations and I suspect it may be
that the collapse of the insect population actually drove the extinction of the
plants that depended on specific insects.
After all we are dealing with sudden Sulfur and dust laden atmosphere
generally global in one degree or the other.
Insects are far more
vulnerable than plants that individually can and will survive until rains wash
away the toxins even weeks and months later.
They are not typically killed outright unless it is way too much and way
too long.
Yet the disappearance
of their pollinators would be a species death sentence just postponed.
Bees underwent massive
extinction when dinosaurs did
by
Staff Writers
Durham NH (SPX) Oct 28, 2013
For the first time ever, scientists have documented a widespread extinction of bees that occurred 65 million years ago, concurrent with the massive event that wiped out land dinosaurs and many flowering plants. Their findings, published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, could shed light on the current decline in bee species.
Lead
author Sandra Rehan, an assistant professor of biological sciences at UNH,
worked with colleagues Michael Schwarz at Australia's Flinders University and
Remko Leys at the South Australia Museum to model a mass extinction in bee
group Xylocopinae, or carpenter bees, at the end of the Cretaceous and
beginning of the Paleogene eras, known as the K-T boundary.
Previous
studies have suggested a widespread extinction among flowering plants at the
K-T boundary, and it's long been assumed that the bees who depended upon those
plants would have met the same fate. Yet unlike the dinosaurs, "there is a
relatively poor fossil record of bees," says Rehan, making the
confirmation of such an extinction difficult.
Rehan
and colleagues overcame the lack of fossil evidence for bees with a technique
called molecular phylogenetics. Analyzing DNA sequences of four
"tribes" of 230 species of carpenter bees from every continent except
Antarctica for insight into evolutionary relationships, the researchers
began to see patterns consistent with a mass extinction.
Combining
fossil records with the DNA analysis, the researchers could introduce time into
the equation, learning not only how the bees are related but also how old they
are.
"The
data told us something major was happening in four different groups of bees at
the same time," says Rehan, of UNH's College of Life Sciences and
Agriculture. "And it happened to be the same time as the dinosaurs went
extinct."
While
much of Rehan's work involves behavioral observation of bees native to the
northeast of North America, this research taps the computer-heavy
bioinformatics side of her research, assembling genomic data to elucidate
similarities and differences among the various species over time.
Marrying
observations from the field with genomic data, she says, paints a fuller
picture of these bees' behaviors over time.
"If
you could tell their whole story, maybe people would care more about protecting
them," she says. Indeed, the findings of this study have important
implications for today's concern about the loss in diversity of bees, a pivotal
species for agriculture and biodiversity.
"Understanding
extinctions and the effects of declines in the past can help us understand the
pollinator decline and the global crisis in pollinators today," Rehan
says.
The
article, "First evidence for a massive extinction event affecting bees
close to the K-T boundary," is published in the Oct. 23, 2013 edition of
PLOS ONE.
1 comment:
You might want to check on how Coexist and Chemtrails affect the bees (who fly in the air)...wildlife, animals, mammals and human beings...just saying.
We need to solve this issue now. What happened thousands of years ago is really not all that helpful. Back then, the world was not a polluted mess.
We, the humans, are killing the bees. We kill everything, even our own young!
(Thanks Monsanto) wink wink
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