The number of threatened Australian native bee species is expected to increase by nearly five times after the devastating Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20, according to new research led by Flinders University.
With 24 million hectares of Australia’s land area burnt, researchers say the casualties are clear among bee fauna and other insects and invertebrates after studying 553 species (about one-third of Australia’s known bee species) to assess the long-term environmental damage from the natural disaster.
“Our research is a call for action, from governments and policymakers, to immediately help these and other native populations most in danger,” says lead author Flinders University PhD candidate James Dorey, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Yale University Center for Biodiversity and Global Change.
Of the bees studied, nine species were assessed as Vulnerable and two more Endangered as a result of the multiple fire fronts in the 2019-20 bushfires that also destroyed approximately 3000 homes and killed or displaced an estimated 3 billion animals.
A Weddell seal swims underwater in the Southern ocean. (Credit: John B. Weller)
Read more at: Flinders University
L gracilipes, one of the 11 bees identified as being at greater at risk in the new study. (Photo Credit: Ken Walker, Museums Victoria)