Hi all
Back to the original post regarding the article by McAfee, the header reads: "The Problem with Honey Bees: They’re important for agriculture, but they’re not so good for the environment." Further, she states: "beekeepers secretly love invasive plants."
We can argue who's right about this, that, and the other -- or look more deeply into the subject, which people have done. I have to hand a new book, the title of which is: "UNSOLVED PROBLEMS IN ECOLOGY," published in 2020 by Princeton University Press.
In it, Rachel Winfree writes:
> The accelerating loss of biodiversity worldwide generates many unsolved problems for the twenty-first century. Primary among these, from a human perspective, is how biodiversity loss affects ecosystem functions and services, many of which are essential to human life. However, ecologists actually know rather little about how the biodiversity–function relationship works in real-world ecosystems. In contrast to the consensus of more than 600 studies finding that species richness is important to function within an experimental context, ecologists don’t know to what extent real-world ecosystem functions are dependent on the number of species (species richness), on particular species, or merely on the abundance of individuals, regardless of species. The answer determines whether arguments based on ecosystem services can motivate the conservation of all species, or only the subset, perhaps a small one, of functionally important species.
I would contrast this with McAfee's blanket pronouncement that honey bees are "Not so good for the environment." Of course, her statement is simpler than "Ecologists actually know rather little about how the biodiversity–function relationship works."
PLB
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken.
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