A rare North American bumble bee may have been on a path toward extinction long before modern human impacts, suggesting that its long-term genetic vulnerability made it especially fragile and less able to cope with both past and current environmental stresses.
A rare North American bumble bee may have been on a path toward extinction long before modern human impacts, suggesting that its long-term genetic vulnerability made it especially fragile and less able to cope with both past and current environmental stresses.
The findings of the new study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and co-authored by a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researcher.
The study focused on the Franklin bumble bee, once found only in parts of Oregon and California and last seen alive in 2006. Using DNA extracted from museum specimens collected over the past 40 years, scientists reconstructed the genetic history of the species to understand why it disappeared.
