2 days Ago By Ari Yanover
Many butterflies, bees and moths are fluttering into oblivion. A new report co-authored by a Canadian researcher warns that more than one-fifth of pollinator species it studied in North America are at risk of extinction. Out of 759 pollinators — animals critical for food production and healthy ecosystems — studied in Canada, more than 10 per cent were at some level of risk of extinction, says the study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS.
And of 1,579 pollinators assessed in the United States, 22.5 per cent were found to be at some level of risk. The study is the most comprehensive look at North American pollinators and their conservation status to date, John Klymko, scientist at Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre in Sackville, N.
B., and one of the co-authors, said in a recent interview. Commonly known pollinators, which transfer pollen from one flower to another, are bees, butterflies and moths, Klymko said.
But they also include vertebrates like hummingbirds and bats. “Many plants are reliant on pollinators in order to reproduce,” he said. The study noted that pollinators provide more than $15 billion worth of food each year in North America.
Among the insect pollinators, extinction risks were highest with bees. Out of 472 species of bees studied in Canada and the U.S.
, 34.7 per cent were at risk of extinction. The study said that 10 bee, 11 butterfly, and two moth species were classified as critically imperilled.
Flower flies and beetles are relatively secure from extinction, but all three pollinating bat species are at risk of extinction. The 17 hummingbird species studied have seen a population decline but their numbers are high enough that they don’t qualify for an at-risk status. “To have a broad diversity of pollinators is important because there’s a whole broad diversity of plants that need to be pollinated, and different species of pollinators will be more efficient at pollinating some plants compared to others,” Klymko said.
“Certain species (pollinate) only a handful of plants. And so if you start to lose that diversity of pollinators, there are going to be plant species that are affected.” Klymko studied the extinction risk for flower flies for the paper.
“They’re an attractive group of flies. A lot of them are bee or wasp mimics,” he said, describing the insects. “They hang out on flowers, so it benefits them to look like an insect that can sting you.
They trick predators into thinking that they would be stung. So there are a lot of pretty spectacular-looking flies. They’re a diverse, diverse group.
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