Charlie Thrift: Concentrated Vulnerabilities: Diet Specialists Have Smaller Geographic Ranges

Learn about Charlie Thrift's research on how this makes bees more vulnerable to extinction. Charlie Thrift is a PhD student at UC Santa Barbara in Dr. Katja Seltmann's lab, co-advised by Dr. Hillary Young. Charlie will talk about his recently published research exploring how wild bees with small geographic ranges or narrow diet breadths may be more vulnerable to anthropogenic change. Using occurrence data and diet breadth data for 633 bee species from six families, this research uncovers a positive correlation between these two traits. This concentrates vulnerabilities in a subset of specialist bees, but may also provide an opportunity for targeted conservation efforts. You can help digitize museum records at a natural history museum near you to support research. Or, you transcribe museum labels from the comfort of your own home, supporting various projects on Notes from Nature: https://www.zooniverse.org/organizati...