For the first time ever, scientists have documented a
widespread extinction of bees that occurred 65 million years ago, concurrent
with the massive event that wiped out land dinosaurs and many flowering plants.
Their findings, published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, could shed light
on the current decline in bee species.
Lead author Sandra Rehan, an assistant professor of
biological sciences at UNH, worked with colleagues Michael Schwarz at
Australia’s Flinders University and Remko Leys at the South Australia Museum to
model a mass extinction in bee group Xylocopinae, or carpenter bees, at the end
of the Cretaceous and beginning of the Paleogene eras, known as the K-T
boundary.