A Quarter of Known Bee Species Havenât Been Seen Since 1990
Published: February 1, 2021
The number of wild bee species recorded by an international database of life on earth has declined by a quarter since 1990, according to a global analysis of bee declines.
Researchers analyzed bee records from museums, universities and citizen scientists collated by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, (GBIF) a global, government-funded network providing open-access data on biodiversity.
They found a steep decline in bee species being recorded since 1990, with approximately 25 percent fewer species reported between 2006 and 2015 than before the 1990s.
Although this does not mean these species are extinct, it may indicate that some have become so scarce that they are no longer regularly observed in the wild.
Quarter of bee species haven t been seen in 30 years - research
25 Jan, 2021 01:00 AM
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A leafcutter bee (Megachile sp). Photo / Eduardo E Zattara
The Country
Argentinian researchers have found that, since the 1990s, up to 25 per cent of reported bee species are no longer being reported in global records - despite a large increase in the number of records available.
While this does not mean that these species are all extinct, it might indicate that they have become rare enough that no one is observing them in nature.
The findings appeared on January 22 in the journal, One Earth. The research was conducted at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET).
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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.