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A new study into honey bees has revealed the significant effect human impact has on a bee's metabolism, and ultimately its survival.
Researchers from The University of Western Australia in collaboration with Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Curtin University and CSIRO have completed a world-first study on insect metabolism in free flying insects, focusing on the honey bee. The study funded by an Australian Research Council linkage award has revealed the significant effect human impact on the environment had on bees, which are crucial for the planet, pollinating one-third of everything we eat.
Landscapes that have been degraded mean a reduction in the availability of resources which affects the metabolic rate of the honey bee and puts more strain on its body's ability to function.
Emeritus Professor Don Bradshaw from UWA's School of Biological Sciences said the researchers wanted to find out how honey bees' metabolism was impacted by human made changes to the environment such as clearing of land.
To do this they used a unique method to measure the energy expenditure of bees, originally developed by Professor Bradshaw and used in his research on honey possums. Through this method they were able to measure the metabolic rate of bees when they are in their natural environment, and compare pristine environments rich in resources to degraded environments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Thursday February 09 2017, @12:01PM
as the others, the definition of cleared land was not, um, clear...
for example, our 10 acres are so overgrown with trees (which i am in the middle of a drastic thinning out project), that it is NOT hospitable to wildlife... deep, dark, dense forests are not good habitat for most wildlife, only a few specialists (of macro species) can thrive in such conditions... since we don't let wildfires run wild, the regular and natural method of clearing out saplings and underbrush does not happen... therefore, the 'specimen' trees get surrounded with small trees which grow up like 60' matchsticks, then when/if a fire does come through, it burns down all the large specimen trees too (not to mention our house), rather than just clear out the underbrush and potential competing saplings and put some valuable bio-char back in the system...
NO DOUBT the area we had cleared around the house and for the garden has regrown tons of 'weeds' and various flowering species which are otherwise smothered out in a dense forest environment... that area is teeming with bugs and birds and wildlife compared to the denser forest next to it... dense forests are generally not good sources of flowering plants, etc that most species ultimately depend on...
in fact, 'disturbed' areas are often more productive for flowering plants and the bugs/critters which depend upon them...
so, yeah, 'cleared' in one context can mean scraped down to the dead dirt and effectively 'dead', or it can mean dense stands of trees have been removed such that a whole other environment and panoply of flowering plants can pop up to support wildlife much better than the static, overgrown forest...