Staggering number of wild bee species unaccounted for since the ’90s
There has been an overwhelming drop in the number of wild bee species that are reported in public records over the past 30 years, according to a new study.
Researchers looked at bee records in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, an online biodiversity data collector, and found there were about 25% less bee species reported between 2006 and 2015 compared to the 1990s.
Study author Eduardo Enrique Zattara, adjunct researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, realized in 2018 that he could track the global population of bee species using the online data to see long-term trends of bee populations.