Dinosaurs weren't the only ones who experienced a mass extinction 65 million years ago. According to new research, bees underwent a similar extinction around the same time the dinosaurs met their demise, and understanding the pollinator's past may be the key to its future.
The findings aren't refreshingly new, but it is the first time the fate of ancient bees around that time period has been accurately verified. Many plants and flowers that ancient carpenter bees relied on went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous and beginning of the Paleogene eras, and while it has been generally assumed bees perished alongside them, poor fossil records have prevented verification.
To deal with this issue, a team of researchers led by Sandra Rehan from the University of New Hampshire relied on molecular phylogenetics. By comparing the molecular evolutionary pathways of four separate groups of bees, the scientists were able to determine when a mass extinction occurred due to the shift in the genetic spectrum.
"The data told us something major was happening in four different groups of bees at the same time," said Rehan. "And it happened to be the same time as the dinosaurs went extinct."
Bees are one of nature's most prolific pollinators and play a crucial role in human agriculture. Certain vital species of bees are currently in the midst of a mysterious epidemic that has experts scrambling for a reason and a solution, and Rehan believes that understanding past bee catastrophes may shed some light on current and future ones.
"If you could tell their whole story, maybe people would care more about protecting them," Rehan says. "Understanding extinctions and the effects of declines in the past can help us understand the pollinator decline and the global crisis in pollinators today."
You can read the full published study detailing the findings in the journal PLOS One.
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