Summer sends Canada’s largest college campus into a slumber. While the years have populated York University’s vast Keele St. grounds with more and more new buildings, July and August still denude the 457-acre property of people.But bumblebees abound.And there one recent morning — in a sweltering meadow on the school’s southeastern-most edge — was PhD student Victoria MacPhail plucking them up, one by one, with an artful twist of a net.“This is a common eastern bumblebee,” said MacPhail, 37, showing off her first, agitated capture in a clear plastic vial.“It is the most common bumblebee you’ll find around here ... and it seems to be loving urban areas in particular,” she said. This stripe-rumped Bombus impatiens is not only thriving in southern Ontario, but is now spreading its labouring wings across large stretches of Western Canada.Like their honeybee cousins, however, many bumblebee species are in trouble — some seeing population declines so steep they’ve all but disappeared from longtime habitats.“We’ve actually found that probably about a third of our bumblebees are in decline,” said MacPhail, her eyes scanning the grassland from beneath a Tilley hat. And MacPhail is an important part of a York-led project that is trying to help address these plunging numbers by recruiting thousands of ordinary citizens from across North America to the cause.Known as the Bumble Bee Watch, the project now employs some 8,300 “citizen scientists” who are on the lookout for the insects in backyards, parks, campgrounds and neighbourhoods throughout the U.S. and Canada.“We’re trying to figure out where are our rare species, where are our common species (and) how are they doing,” said MacPhail, whose doctoral thesis is centred on the project. “Are they doing things that change their range, are they expanding their range, contracting their range, what flowers ...
|
