Hey bumble bee, did you have a good year?

摘要

Environments are everchanging, forcing animals to deal with daily and seasonal variations, such as changing temperature or rainfall. Such variations can shift the times when different species are active and can affect what foods are available, causing direct and indirect competition with other animals for limited resources. Environmental shifts can have different effects on an animal depending on its life stage. Yet, these important life-stagespecific responses to environmental change are often unaccounted for in ecological studies, not because scientists do not recognize their importance, but because long-term monitoring can be challenging. However, these types of studies are desperately needed if we are going to predict the vulnerability of a given species to climate change. Jane Ogilvie at the Rocky Mountain Biological Station, USA, and Paul CaraDonna at the Chicago Botanic Garden, USA, asked how bumble bees at each life stage respond to changes in weather, pollen and nectar availability and how the abundance of previous life stages affect the following generations.