CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

The Loss of Ecosystem Services as a Result of Colony Collapse Disorder

Parker-Reed, SSWAC

Human survival and success around the world is entirely dependent on the resources and services provided by their environment, known as ecosystem services. These services include (but are not limited to) food, raw materials, naturally-derived medicines, nutrient and energy cycling mechanisms, and culturally important landmarks. Pollination, the transfer of pollen grains from the anther to the stigma, is another important ecosystem service that enables plant fertilization and reproduction, and in turn, other ecological, social, and economic benefits. Human food production, for example, is overwhelmingly dependent on pollination provided by honeybees. Unfortunately, with current global problems such as growing human population and increasing pollution levels reaching new extremities each year, the ecosystem services that our world provides us, including pollination, are being diminished or lost completely. A myriad of anthropogenic and environmental factors, including pesticide application, climate change, and parasite-induced disease, are negatively impacting the future of integral pollinators, such as insects, birds, and bats. Collectively, these factors are believed to contribute to massive and mysterious disappearances of worker bees from their hives known as colony collapse disorder (CCD). Due to the global reliance on European honeybees on industrial crop pollination, CCD is responsible for catastrophic losses in agricultural yield in farms around the world. Unfortunately, understanding of the causes of CCD is still fragmentary, and further research is necessary to better treat CCD outbreaks and enforce effective conservation practices to protect one of the worlds most important ecosystem service providers: the honeybee.

https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2015/program/26