Communications of the ACM
'Virtual Safe Space' to Help Bumblebees
The 'virtual safe space' Bumble-BEEHAVE provides a computer simulation of how bumblebee colonies will react to multiple factors such as pesticides, parasites, and habitat loss.
Credit: Matthias Becher
A "virtual safe space" developed at the University of Exeter in the U.K. tests the threats with which bumblebees are confronted within a computer model of bumblebee population dynamics that responds to variables such as pesticides, parasites, and loss of habitat.
The predictive Bumble-BEEHAVE tool is described by Exeter's Grace Twiston-Davies as "a free, user-friendly system" that “takes into account the many complicated factors that interact to affect bumblebees. This provides a virtual safe space to test the different management options."
Bumble-BEEHAVE can model the growth, behavior, and survival of six British bumblebee species in an environment that has various nectar and pollen sources.
Exeter's Juliet Osborne notes the simulation "enables researchers to understand the individual and interacting effects of the multiple stressors affecting bumblebee survival and the feedback mechanisms that may buffer a colony against environmental stress, or indeed lead to spiraling colony collapse."
Twiston-Davies says the researchers are already working with land managers and wildlife groups on the ground.
From University of Exeter
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