First Assignment

A sweeping analysis shows an overall downward trend in bee diversity worldwide, raising concerns about these crucial pollinators.

Liz Langley
JAN 22, 2021

Bees feed us. Many of the 20,000 species pollinate 85 percent of food crops and fruits around the world—everything from garlic and grapefruits to coffee and kale. But, it seems, these crucial insects aren’t doing very well. A study published today in the journal One Earth reveals that in recent decades, the number of bee species reported in the wild has declined globally. The sharpest decrease occurred between 2006 and 2015, with roughly 25 percent fewer species spotted—even as sightings by citizen scientists were increasing rapidly.

Halictid bees—also called sweat bees for their attraction to our perspiration—pollinate important crops such as alfalfa, sunflowers, and cherries. Observations of these tiny metallic fliers have fallen by 17 percent since the 1990s, the study found. Bees in the rare Melittidae family, which provide us with blueberries, cranberries, and orchids, have plummeted by as much as 41 percent. (The world's bees are divided among seven families.)

Though lesser known, such wild bees supplement the work of honeybees in managed hives. “Even if honeybees can be efficient pollinators of many crops, heavy reliance on a single species is very risky,” says study leader Eduardo Zattara, a biologist at the Institute for Research on Biodiversity and the Environment, in Bariloche, Argentina.

For instance, during a disease outbreak in 2006, the U.S. lost about half its honeybees. Had only domesticated bees been present, “the yield loss would have been enormous,” Zattara says. (Read how dying bees spell trouble for U.S. agriculture.) The study drew on an open-access website called the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which contains bee-observation records sourced from museums, universities, and private citizens going back to the 1700s.

Most studies on bee diversity focus on a specific area or species, which is what inspired this broad analysis. “There’s no long-term, very accurate, precise sampling of bees all over the world,” Zattara says. “We wanted to see if we could use this kind of data to get a more global answer, and the answer we got is, yes.” Nevertheless, he cautions, the records that underpin the study don’t give us enough information to determine if certain species have gone extinct. "What we can say is that wild bees are not exactly thriving."

Threats to bees

The analysis shows a decline in species sightings on all continents except Australia, where there’s a comparative dearth of data, Zattara says. Bees don’t inhabit Antarctica. During the second half of the past century, a global agricultural boom led to habitat loss, while widespread use of pesticides killed off many plants bees rely on for food. Meanwhile, warming temperatures have forced bee species out of their native ranges or killed them outright. (Related: Bumblebees are going extinct in a time of “climate chaos.”) Another cause of declines: When countries introduce non-native bees to pollinate particular agricultural crops, pathogens may come with them, “creating insect-style pandemics,” Zattara says. He points to two European bumblebees brought into Chile and Argentina that have driven the Patagonian bumblebee—nicknamed the “flying mouse” on account of its size—to endangered status because of competition for its food and susceptibility to novel diseases.

It won't prevent teens from later becoming smokers. But some health experts say that focusing on the risk of addicting new smokers cuts off a chance to help adults quit.

Sara Harrison
JAN 20, 2021

In the 1970s, a company called Swedish Match started advertising snus to Swedish men. Snus wasn’t a new product; the pouches of tobacco that users tuck into their cheeks or lips, where they slowly release nicotine, had been around since the 17th century. But snus had fallen out of fashion and been replaced by combustible cigarettes. At the time, Sweden, like many other countries, had a smoking problem. Forty percent of men smoked. But as sales of snus picked up, smoking rates plummeted. By the year 2000, Sweden was the only industrialized nation to achieve the World Health Organization’s goal of reducing adult smoking to less than 20 percent.

Snus is a great example of a theory called harm reduction which argues that, rather than promoting public health policies that completely eliminate tobacco, addicted users should have access to products that give them the nicotine they crave, but that drastically reduce the health risks posed by cigarettes. Snus delivers a kick of nicotine, but releases chemicals without the dangers of combustion and tar, some of the major contributors to lung cancer.

Sound familiar? When e-cigarettes (also known as vapes) appeared in the mid-2000s, some researchers in the tobacco control community thought young smokers in the US might make a similar choice, causing overall smoking rates to decline. E-cigarettes create an aerosol by heating a nicotine-containing fluid. That aerosol can be inhaled and exhaled like the smoke from a regular cigarette, but it doesn’t contain the tar and many of the toxic chemicals that tobacco smoke does. While research suggests that these devices have their own dangers, including reducing the lungs’ ability to fight infections, a big cause for concern during the Covid-19 pandemic. But even with their risks, e-cigarette supporters believed these products could present a safer alternative to combustible cigarettes, just as snus did for the Swedes back in the 1970s and ’80s. “People were hoping that would happen here,” says John Pierce, a professor at UC San Diego who researchers cancer and tobacco.

But in a paper published in Pediatrics this month, Pierce and his colleagues show that isn’t happening after all. Instead, young people who experiment with e-cigarettes are three times more likely than ones who have never tried vaping to become daily cigarette smokers a few years later. And the more tobacco products young people experiment with, the greater that likelihood becomes. “We haven’t had this harm reduction thing,” Pierce says. Pierce’s team analyzed data from the US Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study, a survey of nearly 50,000 Americans conducted annually by the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. They looked specifically at people ages 12 to 24 and tracked their responses over the four years between 2013 and 2017, following their use of tobacco products and their progression from occasional experimenters to daily users.

They found that just over 60 percent of respondents in this age group tried a tobacco product at some point and that 30 percent experimented with multiple products like e-cigarettes, hookahs, and cigarillos. Of all the young people in the study, those who experimented with many different products were 15 percentage points more likely to become daily cigarette smokers than those who had only tried one kind of tobacco product. And teenagers who experimented with e-cigarettes before age 18 were more likely to become daily smokers than those who tried vaping later in life. In other words, the theory that this new product would dissuade young people from using cigarettes didn’t hold up.

It’s cold outside. The pandemic is getting worse. It’s time to look inward with the help of movement practices that create healthy bodies and minds.

Gia Kourlas
JAN 22, 2021

Bruce Lee talked about emptying the mind in order to become formless and shapeless like water, which “can flow or it can crash,” he said. “Be water, my friend.” The pandemic has made us shift our perspectives in so many ways, but Lee’s guidance rings true: We need to be water. And we need to move. It heals. And if more people moved, they might just find their way to dance. Dancers know that how you are in your body relates to how you are in your mind and how you move through the world. Most New Yorkers live in cramped quarters that now often double as workplaces, too. Our bodies are constricted. And though we aren’t back to a complete shutdown the way we were in March, as the pandemic drags on, it’s getting harder and harder to find moments of release and wonder.

Winter is not my greatest season. I mean it can be a struggle to stand. But when I least feel like moving is when I need it the most. It’s good to sweat. I run. Last spring, a friend who knows me well recommended a trainer, Erika Hearn, and she has saved my body and mind through her Instagram classes, which mix strength, Powerstrike kickboxing, resistance band-work and mobility. It’s a meticulous total package; plus, she moves with such dynamic ease that watching and mirroring her fluid execution of steps — including her occasional human moments of imperfection — in some small way fills the gap of not being able to see live dance. When she says “stay with me” it’s not only about completing a movement, it’s about having faith in movement.

Still, it’s hard to remain optimistic about much of anything at dusk. It’s too cold to roam the city; we’re basically stuck inside. But even our milder version of lockdown doesn’t have to feel as if we’re locked up. We can use movement as a way to look inward. Through stillness and slowing down, we can create a rich sense of space by moving our minds around our bodies. Slowing down can feel like freedom — and, for me, that’s a good antidote to dusk.

Somatic practice — named for “soma” or the living body — is a way to connect the mind and body that encourages internal attentiveness. “We’re talking about allowing the living body to inform behavior,” Martha Eddy, an esteemed somatic movement therapist, said. “But then how do you do that? It’s by using your proprioception” — the ability to feel the body in space — “and your kinesthetic awareness.” Focusing on the navigation of space and becoming conscious of how you move, especially when outdoor ventures are limited, is unsettling and grounding, excruciating and exciting, but always transformative. It’s a trip you can take. “It’s a mind journey,” Eddy said. “And it’s a mind journey that’s real.”