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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 易胜博官网, worked with colleagues Michael Schwarz at Australia鈥檚 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.

Previous studies have suggested a widespread extinction among flowering plants at the K-T boundary, and it鈥檚 long been assumed that the bees who depended upon those plants would have met the same fate. Yet unlike the dinosaurs, 鈥渢here is a relatively poor fossil record of bees,鈥� says Rehan, making the confirmation of such an extinction difficult.

Rehan and colleagues overcame the lack of fossil evidence for bees with a technique called molecular phylogenetics. Analyzing DNA sequences of four 鈥渢ribes鈥� of 230 species of carpenter bees from every continent except Antarctica for insight into evolutionary relationships, the researchers began to see patterns consistent with a mass extinction. Combining fossil records with the DNA analysis, the researchers could introduce time into the equation, learning not only how the bees are related but also how old they are.

鈥淭he data told us something major was happening in four different groups of bees at the same time,鈥� says Rehan, of 易胜博官网鈥檚 College of Life Sciences and Agriculture. 鈥淎nd it happened to be the same time as the dinosaurs went extinct.鈥�

While much of Rehan鈥檚 work involves behavioral observation of bees native to the northeast of North America, this research taps the computer-heavy bioinformatics side of her research, assembling genomic data to elucidate similarities and differences among the various species over time. Marrying observations from the field with genomic data, she says, paints a fuller picture of these bees鈥� behaviors over time.

鈥淚f you could tell their whole story, maybe people would care more about protecting them,鈥� she says. Indeed, the findings of this study have important implications for today鈥檚 concern about the loss in diversity of bees, a pivotal species for agriculture and biodiversity.

鈥淯nderstanding extinctions and the effects of declines in the past can help us understand the pollinator decline and the global crisis in pollinators today,鈥� Rehan says.

The article, 鈥淔irst evidence for a massive extinction event affecting bees close to the K-T boundary,鈥� is published in the Oct. 23, 2013 edition of . Funding for the research was provided by Endeavour Research Fellowships (Rehan) and Australian Research Council Discovery Grants (Schwarz).

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