Washington, Jul 10 (EFE).- The populations of bumblebees in North America and Europe are collapsing due to their inability to adapt to climate change, which indicates that some animal life will be unable to change their habitats in order to survive, according to a study published in Science magazine.

“This paper is important because it reinforces the understanding that species will not all be able to shift their ranges in order to adapt to a changing climate,” Sacha Vignieri, associate editor of Science magazine, said.

“For species that evolved under cool conditions, like bumblebees, global warming might be the kind of threat that causes many of them to disappear for good,” said Jeremy Kerr, lead author of the study and professor of biology at Canada’s University of Ottawa.

To carry out this research, Kerr and his team compiled a database with geographic observations of 67 species of bumblebees in Europe and North America between 1901 and 2010.

To their surprise, they discovered that in recent decades when temperatures were higher, these vital crop pollinators had not moved their habitats northwards to survive, but have simply moved within the same habitats to higher, colder elevations.

“We need to have a thoughtful, international discussion about whether we should be helping bumblebee species establish colonies in areas further north, called ‘assisted migration,'” the researcher Kerr said.

The scientists’ conclusion is that the collapse of these species has little to do with the use of pesticides or the intensity of agricultural activity.

What is shrinking bumblebee populations are frequent extreme climate phenomena like heat waves.

“Global warming has trapped bumblebee species in a kind of climate vise – the result is dramatic losses of bumblebee species from the hottest areas across two continents,” the researcher said.

At the same time, he noted the importance of conserving these species around the world to prevent their possible extinction in the future. EFE