It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, April 04, 2024
ENTOMOLOGY
Where the wild bees are—and aren’t—impacts food supply
UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
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NEW RESEARCH LED BY UBC LANDSCAPE ECOLOGIST DR. MATTHEW MITCHELL HIGHLIGHTS THE LINK BETWEEN LOST WILD POLLINATORS AND FOOD PRODUCTION AND PROPOSES WAYS THE PUBLIC CAN CONTRIBUTE TO PROTECTING WILD BEES.
Honey bees—plump, fuzzy and famed for their honey-making—capture the popular imagination. Yet, wild bees are equally vital for pollination and, by some measures, outshine honey bees as pollinators. This is why UBC researcher Matthew Mitchell and his colleagues are deeply concerned about their declining populations.
Dr. Mitchell, a landscape ecologist in the faculties of forestry and land and food systems, sheds light on the link between diminishing numbers of wild pollinators and reduced farm productivity in a recent study published in Environmental Research Letters. In this Q&A, he delves into the research findings and proposes ways the public can contribute to protecting wild bees.
Where can we find wild pollinators, and why are they essential?
Native wild bees—which include mason bees, carpenter bees, sweat bees and bumble bees—and other wild pollinators like moths, wasps, beetles and flies, are found everywhere: in parks and fields, near farms and forests. There are more than 800 species of just native bees in Canada, not counting other pollinators.
Wild pollinators play a vital role in pollinating various crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and oilseeds. Blueberries, cranberries, buckwheat, canola and orchard crops rely heavily on wild pollinators. Wild pollinators also help preserve biodiversity by facilitating the reproduction of numerous plant species.
Native pollinator populations are declining from habitat destruction and fragmentation, widespread pesticide use, and the spread of parasites and pathogens like mites and viruses.
What would happen if all wild pollinators were to disappear?
We'd likely witness a loss of native plant species reliant on wild pollinators, and significant crop yield reductions where wild pollinators supplement or are the sole pollinators of crops. Farmers would face higher costs to cultivate pollinator-dependent crops, as reliance solely on European honey bees wouldn't always be feasible given current honey bee capacity. In some cases, farmers might shift production away from pollinator-dependent crops, leading to increased costs to consumers or scarcity of fruits and vegetables in supermarkets.
Your study focused on the impact of wild pollinator numbers on food-production potential. What did you find?
In Canada, wild pollinators aid in pollinating crops that generate an annual farm income of nearly $2.8 billion and produce calories and nutrients that could feed the equivalent of around 24 million people (although not all these crops are directly consumed by people, as some go to livestock).
Collaborating with colleagues at the Nature Conservancy Canada, we analyzed publicly available data on crops, farm income and nearby pollinator habitats such as forests, wetlands and grasslands to estimate the potential food production and farm income that could be gained if wild pollination was increased.
In Saskatchewan and Alberta, the two provinces most affected by lack of pollinator habitat near croplands, increasing wild pollinator habitat and populations could potentially increase food production by the equivalent of 11.5 million and 4.3 million people fed, respectively, and increase farm income by approximately $1.6 billion for Saskatchewan and $597 million for Alberta.
What can be done to reverse the decline?
Solutions include targeted conservation efforts, such as restoring pollinator habitat in areas where crops depend most on wild pollinators. It's also crucial to promote sustainable farming practices that restore and maintain wild pollinator habitats near croplands.
On an individual or community level, urban gardens, especially if they include pollinator-friendly plants, can greatly benefit wild bees. Advocating for sustainable farming and habitat conservation can influence policymakers.
If addressed, targeted increases in wild pollinator habitat in Canada could help provide additional nutrition for an equivalent of 30 million people annually and increase farmer income by up to $3 billion every year. We would ensure the long-term health of native pollinators and enhance the sustainability and stability of Canadian agriculture and food supply. Without these types of actions, farmers will instead have to use other, potentially more costly, ways to increase productivity or will have to rely on honey bees.
Unveiling the benefits and gaps of wild pollinators on nutrition and income
Butterflies, bees, ants and flies are the most widely referenced arthropods in a sample of almost 4,000 haiku - which commonly describe their color, flight and ecology
PLOS
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THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF HAIKU ABOUT INSECTS, SPIDERS, AND RELATED ARTHROPODS. A NEW STUDY REVEALS WHICH KINDS AND WHICH ASPECTS OF THEIR BIOLOGY ARE REPRESENTED.
CREDIT: MICHAEL TRIBONE / PENN STATE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
Butterflies, bees, ants and flies are the most widely referenced arthropods in a sample of almost 4,000 haiku - which commonly describe their color, flight and ecology
AMHERST, Mass. – Recent research led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst evaluates how well machine learning can identify different insect species by their sound, from malaria-carrying mosquitoes and grain-hungry weevils to crop-pollinating bees and sap-sucking cicadas. Listening in on the insect world gives us a way to monitor how populations of insects are shifting, and so can tell us about the overall health of the environment. The study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, suggests that machine and deep learning are becoming the gold standards for automated bioacoustics modeling, and that ecologists and machine-learning experts can fruitfully work together to develop the technology’s full potential.
“Insects rule the world,” says Laura Figueroa, assistant professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author. “Some are disease vectors and pests, while others pollinate nutritious crops and cycle nutrients. They’re the foundation of ecosystems around the world, being food for animals ranging from birds and fishes to bears and humans. Everywhere we look, there are insects, but it’s difficult to get a sense of how their populations are changing.”
Indeed, in the age of chemical pesticides, climate change and other environmental stressors, insect populations are changing drastically. Some species—like the pollinators that are annually responsible for ecosystem services estimated at well over $200 billion worldwide—seem to be crashing, while others, like mosquitoes that can carry malaria, dengue and other diseases, seem to be surging. Yet it can be difficult to get an accurate picture how insect populations are shifting.
Many traditional methods of sampling insect populations involve sending entomologists out into the field to collect and identify individual species, and while these methods can yield reliable results, it’s also time and resource intensive and often lethal to the insects that get caught. This is where AI comes into the picture.
“After working in the field for over a decade, I can tell the difference between a bee’s buzz and a fly’s buzz,” says Figueroa. “Since many, but not all, insects emit sound, we should be able train AI models to identify them by the unique sounds they make.”
In fact, such training is already happening—but which AI methods are best?
To answer this question, Figueroa and her colleagues, including lead author Anna Kohlberg, who completed this research while working in the Figueroa lab, conducted a systematic literature review to analyze studies that used different kinds of automated bioacoustics models to identify insects. They found models for 302 different species spread across nine taxonomic orders. They broke the resulting models down into three broad categories: non-machine learning, machine learning and deep learning.
The non-machine learning models match insect calls to specific markers that human researchers designate as keys for identification, such as a particular frequency band in a katydid’s call. The model then “listens” for those specific, human-designated cues.
Machine learning, on the other hand, has no pre-ordained set of markers that it uses and instead relies on a flexible computational framework to find relevant patterns in the sounds, then matches those patterns to bioacoustics data that it has been trained on.
Deep learning, a specialized kind of machine learning, relies on more advanced neural computational frameworks that give the model more flexibility in effectively identifying relevant bioacoustics patterns. As it turns out, the models relying on deep learning are the most successful. Some of the best can classify hundreds of species with more than 90% accuracy.
“This doesn’t mean that AI can or should replace all traditional monitoring approaches,” says Kohlberg, and there are limitations in what they can do. Most of the models need huge sets of data to train on, and while they are getting better at working with smaller data sets, they remain data-intensive tools. Furthermore, not all insects emit sounds—such as aphids. And very noisy contexts, like an urban environment, can easily confuse sound-based monitoring efforts.
“Automated bioacoustics is a key tool in a multifaceted toolkit that we can use to effectively monitor these important organisms all over the world,” says Kohlberg.
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