Threats

California is synonymous with fruits and vegetables. An omnivorous pest would be a terrible thing. Cue the light brown apple moth, Epiphyas postvittana. LBAM, as we’re being familiar, would be better known as LBEM, the light brown everything moth, according to one expert quoted in the New York Times, because its larvae munch on just about anything green, including the grape vines of Napa county where it has just been found in large numbers. Omnivory suggests that diversity is unlikely to be much protection.

Then there’s potato wart ((I far prefer the alternative name Black Scab, but that’s probably just me.)), caused by the fungus Synchytrium endobioticum. It is so long-lasting in the soil that even though the direct economic losses are small, it causes enormous indirect losses as farmers are prevented from growing potatoes, according to a (long and thorough) story from the American Phytopathological Society. It’s even on the Federal Bioterrorism list for agricultural plant pathogens. Diversity might help there, if resistance can be found.

June 13, 2007June 13, 2007

The best bee paper ever … for now

What’s Killing American Honey Bees? by Benjamin P. Oldroyd, an Australian entomologist, is without a doubt the best summary of the current state of play on Colony Collapse Disorder. I know I’m biased, being — gasp — a scientist, but Oldroyd’s paper is the bees’ knees. It has hypotheses (wot, no mobile phones?), facts, and interpretations. And one rather interesting conclusion. I’ll let Oldroyd explain:

Remarkably, honey bees maintain the temperature of their brood nest within Â± 0.5 Â°C of 34.5 Â°C, despite major fluctuations in ambient temperature. If the brood is incubated a little outside this range, the resulting adults are normal physically, but show deficiencies in learning and memory. Workers reared at suboptimal temperatures tend to get lost in the field, and can’t perform communication dances effectively. Although entirely a hypothesis, I suspect that if colonies were unable to maintain optimal brood nest temperatures, CCD-like symptoms would be apparent.

… snip …

I suggest that another possible cause of CCD might simply be inadequate incubation of the brood. Thus any factorâ€”infections, chronic exposure to insecticides, inadequate nutrition, migration in adult population, and inadequate regulation of brood temperature might cause CCD-like symptoms.

My hypothesis could be easily tested by removing brood from several colonies and incubating some of it at optimal temperature and some at suboptimal temperature. The brood would then be used to constitute new colonies in which some colonies comprise workers raised at low temperature and some comprise workers raised at optimal temperature. I predict that the colonies comprising workers reared at suboptimal temperature will show signs of CCD. Moreover, I would not be surprised if they showed higher levels of stress-related viral infections. These effects could act synergisticallyâ€”more virus leads to shorter-lived, less efficient workers, that in turn leads to suboptimal temperature regulation, and more short-lived bees.

See, kids, that’s the way science is done. But really, go read the article. And if there’s anything in it you honestly don’t follow, ask.

June 12, 2007June 12, 2007