Anthropogenic climate change has a negative impact on wasp populations. Article about it published In the Journal of Animal Ecology.
The decline in the number of domestic and wild bees and bumblebees over the past decade is a serious concern for environmentalists. A few years ago, the mass death of bees also affected domestic beehives, the exact reason for which is not clear to experts. One hypothesis is that climate change contributes to the development of dangerous diseases and parasites, such as ticks of the genus Varroa and the DWV virus.
Scientists from Imperial College London decided to find out exactly when climatic factors begin to harm bumblebees. To do this, they studied insect collections collected by their caretakers for over a hundred years from museums in London, Edinburgh, Carlisle and Liverpool. The wings of a wasp carry information about the state of its hive and develop asymmetrically under adverse conditions. The analysis showed that climate change began affecting the life of British wasp populations as early as 1925. The strength of its effects grew slowly at first, but since 1975 this increase has accelerated.
Cantwell-Jones and colleagues noted that the most obvious changes in the shape of wasp wings were observed in England during seasons when abnormally high air temperatures combined with heavy rainfall. In the coming years, the health of bumblebees will continue to deteriorate as global warming increases average temperatures and precipitation.
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