Honeybees exert flower power over other species

Study reveals how honeybees dominate wild pollinators when competing for food

Anglia Ruskin University

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Honeybee (Apis mellifera) on an ivy plant (Hedera helix) in Cambridge, England. Photo by Dr Tom Ings of Anglia Ruskin University, the senior author of the study.

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Credit: Photo by Dr Tom Ings of Anglia Ruskin University.

Honeybees are outcompeting wild pollinators in the UK and new research has found evidence of their aggressive behaviour, recording for the first time the extent to which they restrict access to food sources and attack and chase other species.

The study, led by researchers at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and published in the journal Ecological Entomology, took place across two years at five sites in and around the city of Cambridge, all within 300m of known honeybee colonies.

The researchers focused on the behaviour of insects foraging on bramble (Rubus fruticosus) and ivy (Hedera helix), both important sources of nectar and pollen, and visited in large numbers when in flower.

The flower visitors were placed into five categories: honeybees, bumblebees, solitary bees, hoverflies and ‘other’, which included butterflies, beetles and wasps. During 93 hours of observation, researchers recorded all interactions where one pollinator disrupted or prevented another from accessing a flower.

The outcomes were recorded as a ‘win’, where one gained access to a flower resulting in a ‘loss’ of forage for another insect, or a ‘share’, where both gained access with no conflict.

The results found that higher densities of honeybees were associated with both lower numbers of other pollinators and more competitive interactions, with honeybees having a higher proportion of ‘wins’ during their encounters with other flower visitors.

On bramble, a doubling of honeybee density was associated with a 14% reduction in the abundance of bumblebees, while on ivy, an increase in honeybees was linked to fewer solitary bees and hoverflies.

Not only did honeybees win the majority of their interactions, they did this by instigating aggressive interactions, often winning resources by chasing other insects away. Honeybees were actively avoided by other pollinators in 28% of interactions on bramble and 36% on ivy, and they physically displaced or chased rival pollinators in at least one in five winning outcomes on both plant species.

The researchers recorded very few aggressive interactions that were not initiated by honeybees. The only species that contested interactions with honeybees was the ivy bee – a non-native solitary bee that was first recorded in Britain in 2001 – and these were observed defending their food source by displacing and chasing honeybees.

The study is part of a wider project aimed at understanding and mitigating the impact of competition between pollinator species. At a time when the number of honeybee hives are increasing in the UK, with the number of registered beekeepers rising from 19,000 in 2010 to 47,000 last year, the study also suggests climate change could further intensify competition between wild and managed pollinators.

The researchers found that periods when there were higher temperatures were associated with an increase in competitive interactions. It is known that ‘heat stress’ can cause flowers to produce less nectar, and the more limited forage available could be one reason for the increase in interactions between species.

At the same time, pollinators react in different ways to temperature changes, influencing the dynamics of competition. While low temperatures can improve the foraging capacity of hoverflies and bumblebees, which are sensitive to higher temperatures, the opposite is true for honeybees. A previous study found that a 12°C temperature increase led to a 10-fold increase in honeybees leaving their nests.

Researcher and lead author Victoria Buckle, a PhD student at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Cambridge, England, said: “The aim of our study was not to discourage beekeeping, but to better understand how competition happens between wild and managed pollinator species with the aim of helping to conserve our wild pollinators, which play such an important ecological role.

“We found that most interactions when competing for food were instigated by honeybees and they had a greater number of ‘wins’, resulting in a loss of forage for other pollinators. Bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies would avoid, be displaced by and on some occasions be chased off by honeybees.

“An interesting exception was the ivy bee, which would win contests more often against honeybees. It is the first time, to our knowledge, such behaviours have been observed and shows ivy bees are able to ‘hold their own’ in such encounters.

“However, honeybees outcompeted all other wild pollinators and based on our findings, future predicted warming in the UK is only likely to further exacerbate interference competition from dominant honeybees. Therefore, it’s important to find ways to ensure honeybees and wild pollinators can continue to coexist, particularly in locations with a high density of hives, such as urban areas.”

The full open access study, published in the journal Ecological Entomology, is here https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/een.70139

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Journal

Ecological Entomology

DOI

10.1111/een.70139

Article Title

Honeybees directly outcompete other flower visitors through interference competition on shared resource

 

Museum specimens reveal pathogen behind decades-old mystery of disappearing frogs

Dramatic losses of Brazilian frogs in 1970s tied to deadly amphibian chytrid fungus

Smithsonian

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A wild clay robber frog (Haddadus binotatus) seen near the Boracéia Biological Station São Paulo, Brazil.

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Credit: Jack Boyette, Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.

In the 1970s, researchers began to observe drastic amphibian declines in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, a global hotspot of frog biodiversity. For decades, these disappearances remained a mystery. Now, new research from scientists at the Center for Conservation Genomics at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) and Pennsylvania State University (PSU), published today in the journal Molecular Ecology, points to amphibian chytridiomycosis, a devastating infectious disease, as the likely culprit.  

Chytridiomycosis, commonly known as chytrid, is caused by the microscopic fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Believed to have originated in Asia, the chytrid fungus likely swept the globe in the 1970s and 1980s, but scientists did not formally describe the pathogen until 1999. At that point, amphibian populations around the world had suffered catastrophic declines, with hundreds of species pushed to the brink of extinction or beyond. Because many of these declines occurred before the pathogen’s discovery, however, establishing whether the chytrid fungus was responsible has remained a challenge. 

“After almost 50 years, we still aren’t confident what caused many historical amphibian die-offs, making these declines some of the most enduring cold cases in wildlife epidemiology,” said Jack Boyette, an NZCBI graduate fellow and doctoral candidate at PSU, who led the study.  

In Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, amphibian die-offs at the Boracéia Biological Station between 1979 and 1982 have been attributed by some scientists to climate change or extreme weather events. “While environmental factors could have played a role, our findings most directly implicate the chytrid fungus, revealing that regional invasion of the pathogen coincided with these unexplained amphibian disappearances,” Boyette said. 

To crack the case, Boyette and his colleagues turned to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, which holds the collections of William Ronald Heyer, a former curator of amphibians and reptiles. Heyer collected specimens at Boracéia across five field campaigns: two in the 1970s, prior to the sudden amphibian declines, and three in the 1980s, during the aftermath of the die-offs. These collections offered a rare opportunity to trace the pathogen’s arrival across a critical period of amphibian declines. NZCBI researchers collected samples from more than 370 museum specimens representing 17 species to determine when the chytrid fungus first appeared at Boracéia and how infection prevalence varied through time.  

The team also returned to Boracéia six times between 2022 and 2024, alongside researchers from the University of São Paulo, to sample modern amphibian populations. Of the 17 species represented in Heyer’s collection, the researchers could only find 12 at the site. The fate of the other five species remains uncertain, although their continued absence raises concerns that they may have been lost locally. 

The results were stark—specimens collected prior to 1979 showed no evidence of chytrid infection, while more than half of the 1980s specimens tested positive. Surprisingly, the species that suffered the most dramatic declines had no detectable infections, while the species that never declined were highly infected. Although these infection patterns may seem counterintuitive, the researchers hypothesize that they reflect natural patterns of disease tolerance among the amphibian community. “It’s important to keep in mind that not all species suffered catastrophic losses at Boracéia,” Boyette said. “The species that didn’t decline may have naturally tolerated the fungus, allowing them to become infected without suffering mass mortality. By contrast, the species that declined most dramatically may have been so susceptible that infected frogs died before Heyer could collect them.” Together, these findings suggest the chytrid fungus spread rapidly through the amphibian community at Boracéia, shedding light on how quickly this emerging disease can sweep through a community of naive hosts. The use of museum collections is a game changer for researchers seeking to reconstruct historical disease impacts, according to Michael Campana, a genomicist at NZCBI who participated in the study.  

“Museum collectors could not have anticipated how important their collections would be to our modern conservation challenges, but without them, we would never be able to detect pathogens that went unnoticed for decades and reconstruct disease outbreaks that would otherwise remain a mystery,” Campana said. 

Reconstructing historical disease dynamics may also help researchers anticipate future disease outcomes. This is especially relevant as the emergence of another fungal pathogen, B. salamandrivorans, threatens salamanders in Europe and could pose a serious risk to salamander populations in North America.  

At Boracéia, however, the story today is one of resilience. Modern sampling shows that most amphibian species appear to have recovered since the early 1980s. While the chytrid fungus still infects frogs at Boracéia, infection patterns suggest the evolution of widespread pathogen tolerance among species that historically declined, likely promoting their persistence and recovery in the decades since the declines. 

While the researchers acknowledge the site-specificity of the study means the results cannot be extrapolated to the broader Atlantic forest, they do solve the mystery of Boracéia’s disappearing frogs and provide a blueprint for other researchers to conduct similar disease retrospectives in the future. 

The work is far from over. Researchers are now using DNA collected from museum samples to investigate the genomic mechanisms that shaped historical amphibian responses to chytrid, while other ongoing projects aim to fill gaps in historical specimen records using ancient environmental DNA. Together, these efforts will reveal a more detailed picture of chytrid emergence, spread and impacts over the past century, deepening the understanding of its historical toll on biodiversity and helping anticipate future impacts in a world where fungal pathogens remain a major threat. 

About the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute 

NZCBI leads the Smithsonian’s global effort to save species, better understand ecosystems and train future generations of conservationists. Its two campuses are home to more than 2,200 animals, including some of the world’s most critically endangered species. Always free of charge, the Zoo’s 163-acre park in the heart of Washington, D.C., features animals representing 400 species and is a popular destination for children and families. At the Conservation Biology Institute’s 3,200-acre campus in Virginia, breeding and veterinary research on nearly 250 animals representing 20 species provide critical data for the management of animals in human care and valuable insights for conservation of wild populations. NZCBI’s 305 staff and scientists work in Washington, D.C., Virginia and with partners at field sites across the United States and in more than 45 countries to save wildlife, collaborate with communities and conserve native habitats. NZCBI is a long-standing accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

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Journal

Molecular Ecology

DOI

10.1111/mec.70573

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Overcoming Detection Lag in a Cryptic Panzootic: Chytrid Invasion Linked to Historically Enigmatic Amphibian Declines in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2026

 

Storm Harry: Drifting buoys help improve early forecasts of extreme events in the Mediterranean Sea

CMCC Foundation - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change

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A network of drifting buoys equipped with barometers can help improve weather forecasts of extreme Mediterranean storms by providing crucial atmospheric observations from areas of the sea where measurements are scarce. A new study published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society provides the first assessment of the impact of these observations during storm Harry, which affected the Mediterranean region in January 2026.

The findings come from the Mediterranean Extreme Events Experiment (M3E), an international initiative co-coordinated by OGS (Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale) and CMCC. By combining targeted in-situ observations with numerical modelling, M3E supports the deployment of drifting buoys in the Mediterranean basin to improve forecasts of extreme weather events and advance understanding of ocean–atmosphere interactions during storms.

Storm Harry brought intense rainfall and rough seas to several Mediterranean countries between 18 and 21 January 2026. Over three days, rainfall exceeded 300 millimetres in 23 monitoring locations and 400 millimetres in eight of them. The highest total, 482.5 millimetres, was recorded in eastern Sicily.

The storm also had devastating consequences, with hundreds of migrants estimated to have died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean by sea. On land, the storm triggered heavy landslides, including the major landslide in Niscemi, Sicily, destroying homes and forcing around 1,500 people to evacuate.

Forecasts from the ECMWF successfully predicted the heavy rainfall in southern Italy approximately seven days ahead of the event. However, forecasting precipitation in North Africa proved more challenging, partly because of small, rapidly evolving low-pressure systems that are difficult to capture accurately.

“These systems highlight the importance of collecting observations directly at sea,” says Emanuela Clementi, senior scientist at CMCC and co-author of the study. “The Ionian Sea and central Mediterranean have historically had limited coverage of in-situ atmospheric measurements, despite being areas where intense storms and persistent cyclones can develop.”

M3E addresses this gap through drifting buoys that measure atmospheric pressure and sea surface temperature. The observations are transmitted in near real time and made available to forecasting systems, where they can be incorporated into numerical weather prediction models.

The study shows that atmospheric pressure observations from the M3E buoys had a beneficial impact on forecasts during storm Harry. In particular, data from a buoy in the Ionian Sea contributed to improving the representation of atmospheric circulation as storm Harry crossed the region.

An additional experiment compared forecasts using the available Mediterranean drifting-buoy observations with forecasts in which these observations were withheld. The results showed significant differences in forecast sea-level pressure near the Balearic Islands, close to small low-pressure systems associated with the storm.

“The Mediterranean is a relatively small sea, but it can generate very powerful storms, and the countries around it pay a high price. With M3E we are filling a gap in the observations precisely where these storms form. Storm Harry gave us the first evidence that these data help forecasts. For CMCC it is a natural step, because a better atmospheric forecast also means a better forecast of the sea,” says Clementi.

CMCC contributes to M3E through its coordination role and expertise in ocean forecasting, cyclone dynamics, extreme precipitation and observational systems. The atmospheric forecasts produced by ECMWF provide essential forcing conditions for the CMCC Mediterranean Forecasting System (MedFS), which operates within the Copernicus Marine Service.

Since observations are essential for better understanding and forecasting these processes, CMCC also contributes directly to expanding the observational network by providing and deploying additional drifting buoys, including in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to improve spatial coverage across the Mediterranean Sea.

The buoy observations also offer an opportunity to better understand how the ocean and atmosphere interact during extreme storms. By bringing together in-situ observations, weather forecasting and ocean modelling, M3E promotes an integrated approach supported by a partnership of European and US institutions and endorsed by the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP).

The research identifies small-scale low-pressure systems as a priority for future observational campaigns, as better coverage of these features could help reduce forecast uncertainty and improve understanding of the local impacts of Mediterranean storms.

Building on these initial results, plans are underway to expand the observing network from autumn 2026, with seven drifting buoys acquired by CMCC set to be deployed in the Tyrrhenian Sea, alongside additional deployments in the Ionian Sea. These new observations will strengthen coverage in areas where improved data are particularly important for forecasting extreme events.

 

Read the paper:

Lavers, D. A., et al. (2026). The Mediterranean Extreme Events Experiment and storm Harry in January 2026. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.70325

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Journal

Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society

Article Title

The Mediterranean Extreme Events Experiment and storm Harry in January 2026

Article Publication Date

12-Oct-2026

 

Why are there so many plants? Climate change is the important driver

The two warmest time periods on Earth in the past 140 million years drove both mass extinctions and explosions in plant diversity, according to researchers in Australia and Austria who say this could explain how flowering plants became dominant among land

University of Melbourne

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The two warmest time periods on Earth in the past 140 million years drove both mass extinctions and explosions in plant diversity, according to researchers in Australia and Austria who say this could explain how flowering plants became dominant among land plants. The study, published in Nature Plants, examined fossilised pollen and spores to show that the mid-Cretaceous and early Cenozoic periods of extreme global warmth were central to plant evolution. This applies not only to flowering plants, but also to the other main land plant groups.

Land plants are critical for life on land. The energy they capture from the sun underpins the existence of almost all terrestrial animals, fungi and bacteria. Lead author Kale Sniderman, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, said that flowering plants are the most productive and diverse groups of land plants with approximately 400,000 species globally.

"They dominate most ecosystems on land. They are the most important terrestrial players in capturing carbon dioxide from the air. They have evolved complex relationships with animals, fungi, and bacteria," Dr Sniderman said.

"This created vast numbers of species, each specialising in eating, pollinating, dispersing seed and decomposing flowering plants of different species or in different ways."

It’s not clear how flowering plants came to rule the world. In the middle of the Cretaceous Period, during ‘peak dinosaur’ time (~100 million years ago), flowering plants began to displace older plant groups that had dominated the land for 200 million years before. Climate may have been important in driving this transition, but until now a clear link between climate and plant diversity has been elusive due to bias in fossil records.

"The number of available fossils varies over geological time and between regions. Because of this, simple counts of fossilised species can give a misleading sense of diversity over evolutionary time," Dr Sniderman said.

The researchers compiled data of over 60,000 individual fossil occurrences, and applied methods that overcome the major biases in the fossil record. They then generated revised estimates of fossil pollen and spore diversity for successive time periods throughout the past 130 million years.

"Our research shows that both extinction and the emergence of new but evolutionarily related land plants occurred mostly during two intervals of globally extremely warm climate," said Greg Jordan, Professor of Botany at the University of Tasmania and a co-author of the study.

"Each of these extremely warm ‘turnover intervals’ lasted a few million years. Thus, the warmest greenhouse climates simultaneously destroyed and promoted plant diversity, but only when considered over million-year timescales."

"In contrast, cooler climates were marked by little change. Other potential causes of plant diversity trends, like interactions between plant groups, or geographic isolation (e.g., when Australia began moving away from the rest of the southern supercontinent, Gondwana) did not explain the plant diversity trends as much as the climate."

Dr Chris Mays, Curator of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum of Vienna (Austria) and co-author of the study, says that current, human-driven warming is occurring much faster than the mid-Cretaceous and early Cenozoic time intervals.

"Human-driven warming is likely to cause plant extinctions much faster than those during the extreme warming events of the past, Dr Mays warns. “While extinct species will eventually be replaced by new species, not many of us will be satisfied having to wait the few million years for them to evolve, especially since we have the power to prevent the loss of species today, if we stop emitting CO₂ from burning fossil fuels."

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Journal

Nature Plants

DOI

10.1038/s41477-026-02429-y

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

 

Reaching net zero sooner limits long-lasting El Niño-like shift in the Pacific

Reaching net zero sooner would limit long-lasting changes to El Niño and the tropical Pacific, new climate modelling suggests, although heat stored deep in the ocean means changes to the tropical Pacific could persist for centuries.

University of Melbourne

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Southern Ocean and the deep ocean keep warming after emissions stop

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Credit: Aditya Sengupta

Reaching net zero sooner would limit long-lasting changes to El Niño and the tropical Pacific, new climate modelling suggests, although heat stored deep in the ocean means changes to the tropical Pacific could persist for centuries. 

The study, published today in Communications Earth and Environment and led by researchers from the University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Weather of the 21st Century, examined what happens to the tropical Pacific both while the planet is warming and after carbon dioxide emissions cease. 

The research found that stopping emissions would not immediately return the tropical Pacific to its pre-industrial state. Instead, changes to ocean temperatures, winds and rainfall patterns could endure for hundreds of years. 

Lead author University of Melbourne Aditya Sengupta said that stopping emissions remained essential but would not instantly reverse all the changes already set in motion. 

“The atmosphere and the ocean surface can adjust relatively quickly, while the deep ocean absorbs and releases heat over hundreds or even thousands of years. This gives the ocean a long memory of previous greenhouse-gas emissions,” Mr Sengupta said. 

“These findings indicate that key aspects of tropical Pacific climate change could be effectively irreversible over centuries. It strengthens the case for reaching net zero quickly - the longer emissions continue, the more heat accumulates within the climate system and the greater the risk of long-lasting changes. 

“This means it is imperative that rapid emissions cuts and long-term climate adaptation planning go hand in hand even after we reach net zero.” 

The tropical Pacific has a major influence on weather and climate around the world. Much of this influence comes through the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, which alternates between El Niño, La Niña and neutral phases. 

These events can influence rainfall, droughts, floods, heatwaves and bushfire conditions in Australia and across many other regions. Understanding how ENSO will respond to climate change is essential for preparing for future weather and climate risks. 

The researchers first analysed simulations from nine Earth system models. They then used the Australian ACCESS Earth System Model to examine changes for 1,000 years after emissions were stopped at different points within the 21st century. 

Across the models, warming shifted the tropical Pacific’s average conditions towards a more El Niño-like pattern. This does not mean that the Pacific becomes permanently locked in an El Niño event. Rather, the usual temperature difference between the warmer western Pacific and cooler eastern Pacific becomes weaker. 

During an El Niño event, warm surface water extends farther east across the tropical Pacific, cold-water upwelling weakens and major rainfall patterns shift. The simulations suggest that this pattern could increasingly become part of the Pacific’s average background climate. 

Further simulations suggested that these changes could last for centuries. 

The study’s co-author, University of Melbourne Associate Professor Andrew King, said the results reinforced the value of rapid emissions reductions. 

“We found clear benefits from reducing emissions quickly,” Professor King said. 

“Reaching net zero earlier limits the changes occurring within the ocean and reduces the risk of leaving future generations with a substantially altered tropical Pacific.” 

This work was a collaboration between researchers at the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, the University of New South Wales, Monash University, the University of Reading and Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO. 

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Journal

Communications Earth & Environment

DOI

10.1038/s43247-026-04082-x

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Ocean thermal inertia sustains a tropical Pacific mean state shift under net zero

Article Publication Date

13-Oct-2026