New paper out on declines of Western Bumble Bee (Bombus occidentalis) led by Will Janousek and Tabitha Graves at USGS. This was an interesting effort to be a part of, with a long series of expert meetings and revisions leading to the final product. The results don’t paint a promising future for Western Bumble Bee, but there may be hope in things we weren’t able to address in the study like interactions with novel plants and resilience due to locally adapted populations. However, it suggests the most likely scenario are drought and pesticide driven declines of populations.
Check out the paper for yourself here at PNAS.