One way scientists are attempting to solve the recent decline in bee populations is by studying the extinction patterns of ancient carpenter bees, reported Live Science. If they can figure out why bees went extinct before, researchers believe they can potentially prevent bees from going extinct again.
A recent study took the current version of carpenter bees from four different continents and traced their lineage all the way back to their extinct ancestor, which researchers discovered were wiped out about the same time as the dinosaurs, 65 million years. The "dinosaur bees" most likely became extinct because for some reason their DNA lost variety, according to the study.
"We can track periods of diversification and stasis," lead study author Sandra Rehan, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of New Hampshire, told LiveScience. "There was a period where there was no genetic diversification happening for millions of years - a real dearth of speciation. This is an indication of a mass extinction event."
Rehan and her team didn't study whether the two events were related - the extinction of the ancient carpenter bee and the dinosaurs - but they believe the coincidence provides "secondary support" to their theories. If a lack of genetic diversity contributed to the dinosaur's extinction, then likely the same tragic flaw resulted in the same fate for the bees.
"We found this mass extinction event signature in the DNA that just happened to correspond to the extinction of dinosaurs, which was a major change in the global diversity at the time," Rehan said.
Some scientists remain skeptical without an actual fossil of the ancient carpenter bee. Researchers in the study used a technique called molecular phylogenetics, which is based on comparing species without fossil records to similar species with fossil records. According to John Ascher, assistant professor in the department of biological sciences at the National University of Singapore, tends to be "speculative in their reliance on unrealistic and insufficiently justified evolutionary models."
"I would be much more enthusiastic about the discovery of a reliable fossil within any of the extant Xylocopinae tribes (the authors note that there are none)," Ascher told LiveScience via email.
Rehan believes there's something to be gained from the past lives of carpenter bees.
"Bees have gone through hard times, and negative effects have occurred," Rehan said. "We can maybe learn from the past, and learn how pollinators and plants respond to natural disturbances. If we can understand what happened in the past, it can help us understand the current perturbations and loss of diversification."
