(Washington University in St. Louis) A new study grounded in the northern Rockies explores the role of fire in the finely tuned dance between plants and their pollinators. The researchers discovered that wildfire disturbance and plant-pollinator interactions are both important in determining where plants take root and where pollinators are found. But in burned landscapes, plant-pollinator interactions are generally as important or more important than any other factor in determining the composition of species present.

(ScienceDaily, Cell Press) There are over 20,000 species of bees, but accurate data about how these species are spread across the globe are sparse. However, researchers have created a map of bee diversity by combining the most complete global checklist of known bee species with the almost 6 million additional public records of where individual species have appeared around the world. The team’s findings show that there are more species of bees in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern and more in arid and temperate environments than in the tropics.

(Animal Ecology in Focus) The causes underlying the ongoing decline of bumble bees have been much debated, and include habitat loss, pesticides, emerging diseases and climate change. A recent paper evaluates how the combined effects of four common environmental stressors interact to affect bumblebees at the individual and colony levels.