Bumblebees already have to contend with lethal infections, deadly pesticides and habitat loss due to agriculture and urban development. A new study shows they have another cause for worry: climate change.
Over the last century, warming temperatures have noticeably shrunk the areas where bumblebees live in North America and Europe, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
The overall effect of climate change is to “crush bumblebee species in a kind of climate vise,” said Jeremy Kerr, an ecologist at the University of Ottawa and lead author of the study.