A new study on bees, plants and landscapes in upstate New York sheds light on how bee pathogens spread, offering possible clues for what farmers could do to improve bee health.
In the paper, “Landscape Simplification Shapes Pathogen Prevalence in Plant-Pollinator Networks,” published April 28 in the journal Ecology Letters, Cornell researchers gathered data on the entire bee community and the plant species visited on 11 sites surrounded by varying amounts of farmland.
The study, which used empirical data and mathematical modeling, reveals how surrounding landscapes might affect the ways that bees and flowers interact, and how interconnected networks of plants and pollinators influence disease spread in bees. The findings are important because bee diseases have contributed to pollinator declines worldwide.
“Our results are telling us that we need to think about [bee, flower, pathogen and landscape] interactions,” said Laura Figueroa, the paper’s lead author and a doctoral student in the lab of Scott McArt, assistant professor of entomology.
Continue reading at Cornell University
Image via Cornell University
