Wildfire bees on the brink
Black Summer blazes raise extinction risk forecasts

Date:
October 4, 2021
Source:
Flinders University
Summary:
The number of threatened Australian native bee species is
expected to increase by nearly five times after the devastating
Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20, new research has found. With
24 million hectares of Australia's land area burnt, researchers
say the casualties are clear among bee fauna and other insects
and invertebrates after studying 553 species (about one-third of
Australia's known bee species) to assess the long-term environmental
damage from the natural disaster.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The number of threatened Australian native bee species is expected
to increase by nearly five times after the devastating Black Summer
bushfires in 2019-20, new research led by Flinders University has found.


==========================================================================
With 24 million hectares of Australia's land area burnt, researchers
say the casualties are clear among bee fauna and other insects and invertebrates after studying 553 species (about one-third of Australia's
known bee species) to assess the long-term environmental damage from
the natural disaster.

"Our research is a call for action, from governments and policymakers,
to immediately help these and other native populations most in danger,"
says lead author Flinders University PhD candidate James Dorey, who is now
a postdoctoral researcher at the Yale University Center for Biodiversity
and Global Change.

Of the bees studied, nine species were assessed as Vulnerable and two
more Endangered as a result of the multiple fire fronts in the 2019-20 bushfires that also destroyed approximately 3000 homes and killed or
displaced an estimated 3 billion animals.

The new study published in Global Change Biology warns widespread wildfire
and forest fire damage is being repeated all around the world, from North America and Europe to the Congo and Asia, causing catastrophic impacts
on biodiversity and sudden and marked reduction in population sizes of
many species.

"In these circumstances, there is a need for government and land
managers to respond more rapidly to implement priority conservation
management actions for the most-affected species in order to help prevent extinctions," says Mr Dorey.



========================================================================== "Conserving insects and other less visible taxa should also be a factor
in restoring and preserving some of the hundreds of bees that may not yet
have been studied or recorded." He says the study forms a foundation for assessment of other taxa in Australia or on other continents where species
are understudied and not registered on datasets or by the International
Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN
Red List).

"Climate change is increasing the frequency of natural disasters like
wildfire, which impacts our wildlife," says fellow author Dr Stefan Caddy-Retalic, from The University of Adelaide and University of Sydney.

"Our study shows that we can assess the likely impact of natural disasters
on poorly studied species, even when we can't physically visit the field
to do surveys." "Listing severely-impacted species on the IUCN red list
and under Australian law represents our best approach to lobby governments
to act," he says, adding native bees are very important providers of
ecosystem services including pollination, but most are poorly known.

"Most people aren't aware of just how vulnerable our native bees are
because they are not widely studied," adds Flinders University researcher Olivia Davies, another of the 13 authors on the major paper. "The fact
that no Australian bees are listed by the IUCN shows just how neglected
these important species are." The study, which recommends 11 Australian
bee species (just 2% of those analysed) as priority taxa for listing as
IUCN Threatened species, also demonstrates a new model for "using the
data we already have to understand how natural disasters are likely
to impact key species and their ecosystems." "Being able to collect
targeted data will always be the gold standard but we shouldn't let data
gaps stop us from acting to protect species we know are vulnerable,"
Dr Dorey concludes.

The collaborative study includes researchers from Flinders University's Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics and Sociality, the South Australian
Museum, University of Adelaide, Curtin University, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, Murdoch University and Charles Darwin University.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Flinders_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. James B. Dorey, Celina M. Rebola, Olivia K. Davies, Kit
S. Prendergast,
Ben A. Parslow, Katja Hogendoorn, Remko Leijs, Lucas R. Hearn,
Emrys J.

Leitch, Robert L. O'Reilly, Jessica Marsh, John C. Z. Woinarski,
Stefan Caddy‐Retalic. Continental risk assessment for
understudied taxa post‐catastrophic wildfire indicates severe
impacts on the Australian bee fauna. Global Change Biology, 2021;
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15879 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211004130542.htm

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