Can you cut 1 Tonne of carbon pollution out of your life?
Take the challengeGlobal warming has driven bees and flowers to an evolutionary showdown.
The sting of climate change is making it harder for flowers to survive, forcing bumblebees to be less selective with the type of flower that they pollinate. And their physical features are rapidly evolving to adapt to this decline in flower population.
The study, led by the State University of New York's Nicole Miller-Struttman, was carried out in the alpine region of Colorado. It explains how in only 40 years, two species of long-tongued bumblebees there have had a decrease in tongue length of 24%.
"A 24% decrease in tongue length is really dramatic. That was in 40 years, in 40 generations, I should say, because these bumblebees only have one generation a year. That’s a pretty short period of time to see such a dramatic shift,”- Miller-Struttmann told Wired.com
Photo: Tubular flowers like these can't keep up with the bees, Shutterstock
Now that their tongue length has decreased, the picky pollinators may be more capable of coping to environmental changes as a shorter tongue means that the bees can pollinate a wider range of flowers.
These alpine regions are often considered to be the "canaries in a coal mine" as they are very sensitive to the brunt of climate change. There, bumblebees and narrow-tubed flowers evolved alongside one another as the bees' long tongue could reach into these flowers to pollinate them.
Long-tongued bee populations have declined by a quarter since 2012. But unlike the bees, the generational period for these flowers are in decades – much longer than the bees' single year generation. This means that the flowers will take longer to evolve. And now that the bees are evolving so rapidly, the flowers aren't able to keep up.
Read this next: How to make your garden bee-friendly & help declining bee populations
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