Troubles for Bees in the Tropics :
How could diseases in honey bees threaten native pollinators in Mexico?
Insect pollinators are important providers of the ecosystem service of pollination, but they are in decline globally. Let’s explore how this could affect biodiversity using experiments that
examine how viral diseases can spread from managed honey bees to native stingless bees and affect their survival.
When living things get sick, the organism causing the disease can jump from one species to another sometimes, as when humans were infected by Covid-19, a virus that probably jumped from an animal to humans. This is called pathogen spillover, and it is becoming a big problem for the world’s biodiversity, particularly for bees, some of the most important pollinators on earth!! Pollinators help plants reproduce by carrying pollen from flower to flower. Without them, many foods we depend on like fruits, nuts, and vegetables could disappear. Unfortunately, many bee species are declining around the world, and one reason is the spread of diseases from managed bees (like honey bees kept by beekeepers) to wild bees. Most of what we know about this problem comes from colder, temperate regions. But what about the tropics? Let’s investigate how honey bees, an introduced bee species in the Americas, can spread viruses to native stingless bees in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico where these amazing pollinators have deep cultural, ecological, and economic importance.
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