• Question: Does pollution make it harder for a bee to communicate with a flower?

    Asked by Anon to Matthew (known as Kaan by on 7 Jul 2020.
    • Photo: Matthew Alkan

      Matthew Alkan answered on 7 Jul 2020:


      That is a very good question and i hope i am well placed to answer this for you. First it is important to try and understand what pollution is. There are lots of different types of pollution and individual pollutants. The one that has been most heavily studied in relation to bees is ozone and it has been shown that by increasing the amount of ozone there is a certain level (generally regarded as 80 parts per billion) above which bees show difficulty in learning things and also difficulty in finding plants.

      We know that bees use the smell of flowers to find flowers and the smell of the flower changes when it reacts with ozone. We know when a chemical reaction takes place, the starting chemicals are consumed and new chemicals are produced. My work is exploring the effect of the consumption of these chemicals and the effect of the new chemicals produced. What is very exciting is that its been found that in certain chemical reactions such as those that we study, very small particles are formed as well as gas phase reaction products. I will also be exploring the effect of these particles on a bees ability to recognise the smell of the flower.

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