Museum collections indicate bees increasingly stressed by changes in climate over the past 100 years

Two papers analyzing bumblebee populations in the UK were published today.

The bee specimen's body shapes were looked at in the first place. The group looked at the bumblebee wings as an indicator of stress. The bees had stress during development that affected their growth.

The group found evidence of stress getting higher as the century progressed from its lowest point. Each bee species had a higher proxy of stress in the last half of the century.

Predicting the future can be learned from the past.

The team found that bees showed higher wing asymmetry in hotter and wetter years. The study is in the journal of animal ecology.

By using a proxy of stress visible on the bee's external anatomy, we can look to more accurately track it.

The goal is to better understand responses to specific environmental factors and learn from the past to predict the future according to author Dr. Arce. We would like to be able to forecast where and when bumblebees will be most at risk, and how to save them.

bumblebees may be in for a rough time with hotter and wetter conditions predicted to place bumblebees under higher stress because of climate change, according to senior author Dr. Richard Gill.

Single legs have a lot of genetic material from them.

In a second parallel study, the team was able to sequence the bumblebee genomes of more than 100 museum specimen dating back more than 130 years. For the first time, ancient DNA methods were used to study an insect population.

The Natural History Museum and the Earlham Institute quantified DNA preservation using just a single bee leg. The researchers can now look at how stress may lead to genetic diversity loss.

The team will use this data to study how bee genomes have changed over time in order to understand how whole populations have adapted to changing environments.

Museum collections have a value.

The team worked with curators from the Natural History Museum London, National Museums Scotland, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and World Museum.

Museum insect collections offer an unparalleled opportunity to study how the genomes of populations and species have been affected by environmental changes through time. Understanding how to use them for genetic studies is important.

One of the main problems with museum collections is that the quality of DNA can be very variable, making it hard to predict which type of analyses we should do. Our ongoing work to understand the history and future of insect populations has been boosted by the fact that we now have a better idea of how to preserve the genes of insects.

Dr. Gill said that the studies show the value of using museums to go back in time and find out what happened in the past. We can only discover more by working with these vital public collections and collaborating with curators.

The work could not have been done without the commitment, hard work, and diligence of the museum curators, as well as our other partners. The bumblebee reference genome was supported by funds from theBBSRC.

More information: Aoife Cantwell-Jones, et al, Signatures of increasing environmental stress in bumblebee wings over the past century: Insights from museum specimens, Journal of Animal Ecology (2022). doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.13788

Victoria Mullin and her team studied the preservation of genes in insects from natural history collections.

Journal information: Journal of Animal Ecology