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CU: Rare western bumblebees netted on Colorado’s Front Range
Sep 3rd
A white-rumped bumblebee that has been in steep decline across its native range in the western United States and Canada appears to be making a comeback on the Colorado Front Range.
A survey of bumblebee populations carried out largely by University of Colorado Boulder undergraduates in undisturbed patches of prairieland and in mountain meadows above campus has turned up more than 20 rare western bumblebees, known scientifically as Bombus occidentalis.
This is the fourth summer of a planned five-year survey in Boulder County, led by biologists Carol Kearns and Diana Oliveras, both of whom teach in CU-Boulder’s Baker Residential Academic Program. The survey team, which this summer included five undergraduates along with Oliveras and Kearns, has been hunting bumblebees at nine different locations spanning low, middle and high elevations.
Volunteer Zoe Paggastis checks out a rare whire rump bumblebee found along the Front Range
The first western bumblebee was netted last year at one of the low-elevation plots, located at around 5,000 feet. The same plot also was visited frequently by Kearns and Oliveras during a more general survey of all pollinators between 2001 and 2005.
“For five years we sampled fairly intensely at this one site and never found anything,” Oliveras said. “Then all of a sudden, last year, we found several bees at that one site.”
The surveyors also found western bumblebees last year at a mid-elevation site of around 8,000 feet. In all, the team found nine western bumblebees in 2012: three queens and six workers.
Because insect populations are notoriously variable from year to year, Kearns and Oliveras wanted to find the bumblebees for a second year before announcing that the western bumblebee appeared to be returning to the Front Range. This year, the team has netted more than a dozen western bumblebees at four different locations, including the same low-elevation prairie plot and all three mid-elevation meadows. The distance between the sites means that the bumblebees are likely from separate colonies.
“These are sites that are fairly far away from each other, even as the crow flies,” Oliveras said. “Within a plot, if you’re going to be conservative, you can say that all the Bombus occidentalis arose from a single colony. But between plots, that’s quite a distance for them. They wouldn’t normally be traveling that far.”
The western bumblebee was once ubiquitous across the western portion of the United States and Canada, Oliveras and Kearns said. Its northern range encompassed all of Alaska, the Yukon Territory, British Columbia and western Alberta. Its southern boundaries extended as far south as Arizona and New Mexico. The bumblebee’s range also stretched from the Pacific Ocean eastward through North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Colorado. But beginning in the late 1990s, the western bumblebee became harder and harder to find.
“They have been disappearing rapidly across the West Coast, and there have been only occasional sightings in the Rocky Mountains,” Kearns said. “People have found a few bumblebees on the Western Slope of Colorado, but we were looking for them here and we weren’t finding any.”
Several factors have been implicated in the decline of the western bumblebee, according to Kearns and Oliveras. The biggest suspect is a non-native gut parasite that may have been transmitted from commercially raised bumblebee colonies. While parasites and other diseases can kill bees outright, anything that affects the bumblebees’ food supply or nesting sites also will affect their ability to survive. That means that habitat loss, pesticides, climate change and invasive plants and animals may be contributing to the losses in western bumblebee populations.
Earlier this summer, reports that the western bumblebee had been spotted in the Seattle area were confirmed by local biologists, indicating that the bumblebees could be making a broader comeback.
The wider goal of the ongoing bumblebee survey in Boulder County is to catalog all the types of bumblebees buzzing around the area and their population size. The team has catalogued a number of different species during the last four summers, including the mountain bumblebee, the Nevada bumblebee, the two-form bumblebee and the central bumblebee, among others.
“Our whole interest in bumblebees relates to the fact that pollinators are declining, but there is no abundance data for bumblebees in this area from the past,” Kearns said. “How do you tell if something is declining if there are no abundance data? So we decided we’d get out there and we’d find out what bumblebees are here and how many.”
Each year, Kearns and Oliveras have recruited undergraduate students to help them. This summer, the undergraduate researchers were Benjamin Bruffey, Sam Canter, Sarah Niemeyer, Zoe Praggastis and Cole Steinmetz.
To see a video about CU-Boulder’s bumblebee survey visit http://youtu.be/sKryBKX-nbU. For more information on the Baker Residential Academic Program visit http://bakerrap.colorado.edu/.
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CSU fell to in-state rival CU, 41-27 on Sunday
Sep 2nd
By Katie O’Keefe
CSU Collegian
CSU fell to in-state rival CU, 41-27 on Sunday at Sports Authority Field at Mile High, giving first-year CU head coach Mike MacIntyre his first win as a Buffalo.
In the opening game of the season, CU equaled their entire number of wins from last year (1-11). The Buffs were able to beat the Rams with explosive plays from receiver Paul Richardson and their ability to capitalize on the Rams’ mistakes.
CU was lead by quarterback Connor Wood in his second start for the Buffaloes. He finished the game with 400 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions.
“He played like a grown man,” said Richardson. “I couldn’t even tell you how proud I am of him.”
CU quarterback Conner Wood passed for 400+ yards in the game.
Richardson, who was forced to sit out all of last season because of a torn ACL, was a weapon CSU could not contain. He finished the game with ten catches for 208 yards including an 82-yard touchdown run on CU’s first possession of the game to put the Buffs ahead of the Rams, 7-0.
Paul Richardsonscored two touchdowns and rushed for 200+yards in the victory
After a quarterback battle that lasted until game day, CSU quarterback Garrett Grayson was picked to lead the Rams. Grayson finished the game with 201 yards and zero touchdowns.
McElwain said his decision to play Grayson over junior Connor Smith and freshman Nick Stevens was based on Grayson’s preparation for the game.
“I think he was ready,” McElwain said after the game. “I’m not putting this loss on Garrett by any stretch of the imagination.”
The score was 10-0 at the end of the first quarter after the Rams defense held CU to a field goal.
A 49-yard field goal by kicker Jared Roberts put the Rams on the board with 14:17 left in the half.
The Rams receivers struggled to catch the ball throughout the game. The offense finished the game 2-of-14 on third down conversions.
“Offensively we didn’t do a very good job of keeping our defense off the field (by) sustaining drives,” McElwain said.
CU added to their lead after a 17-yard touchdown pass from Wood to receiver D.D. Goodson, making the score 17-3 Buffs with 3:56 left in the first half.
The Rams completed their first third-down conversion on their final drive of the half after previously going 0-for-6. With less than two minutes to go in the half, CSU running back Kapri Bibbs ran the ball for 7 yards and the score to give the Rams their first touchdown of the game and Bibbs’ first touchdown of his career as a Ram.
After a CU field goal, the Buffs were up 20-10 at the half.
Coming out of the half, CSU seemed to have found a second wind. Big plays by the special teams kept CSU in the game during the third quarter.
After going three and out on their first possession to start the second half, CU punted the ball to CSU punt returner Joe Hansley who returned the ball 74 yards for the touchdown.
After CU was forced to settle for a field goal, CSU punt returner Thomas Coffman got in on the action and returned the punt 84 yards . Moments later, Bibbs scored his second touchdown of the game giving CSU its first lead, 24-23. Bibbs was given more carries after running back Donnell Alexander went down in the first half with an upper body injury, said to be a hand injury after the game.
In the fourth quarter, though, Bibbs made a costly mistake when he fumbled the ball which was recovered by CU and returned for the touchdown, giving CU a 31-26 lead and momentum back in favor of the Buffs.
The Rams would not lead again in the game.
A 75-yard pitch and catch from Wood to Richardson gave CU a 41-27 lead over the Rams after the successful extra point and the icing on the cake.
CU will take the Centennial Cup and year-long bragging rights back to Boulder after the Rams earned both in a win over the Buffs a year ago. CSU hasn’t had back-to-back wins over CU since the 1999 and 2000 seasons, a stat that will remain at least until 2015.
Football Beat Reporter Katie O’Keefe can be reached at sports@collegian.com
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CU study: Conservation efforts might encourage some to hunt lions
Aug 26th
Conventional wisdom holds that East Africa’s Maasai pastoralists hunt lions for two distinct reasons: to retaliate against lions that kill livestock or to engage in a cultural rite of passage. But that view reflects mistranslations of Maasai terms and a simplification of their cultural traditions and their relationship with wildlife, a team of researchers led by a University of Colorado Boulder geographer has concluded.
Further, some conservation initiatives including those designed to save lions from being hunted have either failed to work or in some cases appear to have incited Maasai to hunt more lions as a form of political protest, the researchers report.
Such nuances are important, because it’s harder to control the hunting of lions unless society knows precisely why lions are hunted, the researchers contend.
Many populations of Panthera leo—African lions—are falling, and the species is classified as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’ Red List.
Lion hunting is outlawed in Kenya and in Tanzania is limited to mostly tourists hunting with permits, unless the hunt is to eliminate a lion in defense of life or livestock. Still, lion hunting regularly occurs in both countries, usually without the hunters’ following the law.
“We saw an inaccurate representation of the exact reasons for why Maasai hunt lions, and we had a lot of ethnographic background to correct that,” said Mara J. Goldman, the assistant professor of geography at CU-Boulder who led the study.
Goldman collaborated with Joana Roque de Pinho, a postdoctoral researcher at the Instituto Superior de Ciencias Sociais e Politicas (Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal), and Jennifer Perry, a CU-Boulder geography alumna now studying law at the university.
Goldman and her fellow researchers conducted 246 in-depth interviews of Tanzanian and Kenyan Maasai between 2004 and 2008. They found that Maasai hunt lions for multiple overlapping reasons, some relating to predation on livestock and some not.
In some cases, Maasai said they hunted lions to prevent the potential killing of livestock, especially by lions that had killed livestock before, rather than just as retaliation.
And while Maasai still celebrate successful lion hunts and the prowess of the warriors who hunt, that cultural tradition can be less of a motivation to hunt than political discontent.
In Kenya, for instance, conservation programs aim to curb Maasai lion hunting by financially compensating Maasai for livestock killed by lions. In Tanzania, suggestions have been made by some to start such ‘compensation’ programs, but the Maasai themselves explain why this strategy has limitations:
“We cannot agree (to compensation) because we do not have cattle to be killed every day,” an elder Maasai told the researchers. “If they pay money today, then tomorrow, they will pay every day because the lion will keep coming back to eat cattle until all the cattle are gone. And then what will we do with the money?”
These sentiments were expressed in a village bordering the Manyara Ranch, a Tanzanian conservation trust on which hunting is prohibited but over which Maasai from neighboring villages are meant to share governance. In the beginning, the elders kept the warriors from hunting lions, the researchers found.
But after Maasai representation in ranch governance was diminished, the Maasai felt disenfranchised. Lion hunting increased in frequency and severity and was no longer discouraged by elders, the researchers said.
“We have no reason to follow the rules,” one elder told the researchers.
Goldman researches human-environment relations with the Tanzanian and Kenyan Maasai, one of the most recognizable ethnic groups in Africa, known for their distinctive, colorful dress and social customs, and most recently for their lion-hunting practices.
Although the primary motivations for lion hunting differed somewhat between Tanzania and Kenya, the researchers emphasize that Maasai have multiple, overlapping reasons to hunt lions: to reaffirm the protective role of young warriors, to help select brave leaders among warrior groups, to allow individual warriors to gain prestige, to eliminate lions that prey on livestock and to prevent lions from becoming habituated to eating livestock and sometimes harming people.
The multiple reasons illustrate the limitations of explaining Maasai lion hunting “as either a cultural manhood ritual or a retaliatory act,” the researchers write.
“Participatory conservation interventions that respect Maasai knowledge and promote full engagement with management processes are likely to have far better success in persuading Maasai to change or moderate such behaviors themselves,” the research team states, adding that “lion conservation projects rarely address such complex politics.”
Goldman, also a faculty research associate at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science, is the first author on the study that was recently published online in the journal Oryx and is scheduled to appear in the journal’s October print edition. The study is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0030605312000907.
For more on this story, see Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine at http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine.
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