Heat and desiccation tolerances predict bee abundance under climate change

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kazenel, Melanie R.; Wright, Karen W.; Griswold, Terry; Whitney, Kenneth D.; Rudgers, Jennifer A.
• 署名单位: University of New Mexico; United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); Utah System of Higher Education; Utah State University
• 刊物名称: Nature
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0028-3953
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07241-2
• 发表日期: 2024-04-11
• 关键词: northern chihuahuan desert; body-size; flower visitors; declines; vulnerability; responses; patterns; plants; precipitation; CONSEQUENCES

摘要

Climate change could pose an urgent threat to pollinators, with critical ecological and economic consequences. However, for most insect pollinator species, we lack the long-term data and mechanistic evidence that are necessary to identify climate-driven declines and predict future trends. Here we document 16 years of abundance patterns for a hyper-diverse bee assemblage1 in a warming and drying region2, link bee declines with experimentally determined heat and desiccation tolerances, and use climate sensitivity models to project bee communities into the future. Aridity strongly predicted bee abundance for 71% of 665 bee populations (species x ecosystem combinations). Bee taxa that best tolerated heat and desiccation increased the most over time. Models forecasted declines for 46% of species and predicted more homogeneous communities dominated by drought-tolerant taxa, even while total bee abundance may remain unchanged. Such community reordering could reduce pollination services, because diverse bee assemblages typically maximize pollination for plant communities3. Larger-bodied bees also dominated under intermediate to high aridity, identifying body size as a valuable trait for understanding how climate-driven shifts in bee communities influence pollination4. We provide evidence that climate change directly threatens bee diversity, indicating that bee conservation efforts should account for the stress of aridity on bee physiology. A 16-year dataset of abundance patterns of a diverse assemblage of bees in New Mexico, USA predicts declines for many bee species and indicates that drought-tolerant taxa will prevail in a warming and drying climate.