Changing distributions, changing climate: Using <i>Bombus</i> as an indicator of global warming near Crested Butte, Colorado

Abstract

As well-studied, annual species inhabiting an environment with a short growing season, the bumble bees (Bombus spp.) in the area around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) near Crested Butte, Colorado, provide an ideal system for monitoring climate change. In 1974, Graham Pyke conducted a survey of the bumble communities around RMBL by conducting a series of five transects over varying elevational ranges. He found that bumble bee species with similar tongue lengths tend to replace each other along an elevational gradient. In 2007 we repeated Pyke’s original transects to determine whether these transitions between bee species have changed in elevation. We also conducted floral surveys to determine whether any changes found in bee distributions were caused by changes in floral resources or by a direct effect of climate change. Within the groups based on tongue length, we found an overall increase in the relative abundance of low altitude species recorded and a decrease in the high altitude species. This corresponded with upward shifts in elevation in the transitions between species in all four transects investigated. For groups of bees with just one species, there was no directional shift in distribution. We did not find any major differences in floral distributions between the years, indicating that changes in Bombus distributions are experiencing a direct effect of climate change.

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