Insects and Native Plants in the News
By Shirley Denton Common Eastern Bumble Bee ( Bombus impatiens ) foraging on a Partridge Pea ( Chamaecrista fasciculata ) in Split Oak Forest WEA in Orange County. Photo by Valerie Anderson. Two native insects have been in the news, and not in a good way. The first, the bumblebee, is an important native pollinator. The second, the lightning bug, needs native habitats. Neither is a single species, but together, they demonstrate the importance of maintaining healthy native plant ecosystems in balance with other environmental factors. Both demonstrate the importance of climate. Both demonstrate the importance of human behavior. Fireflies in Maryland CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by Robert Sullivan The bumblebee study (published in Science) showed that populations in North America and Europe have plummeted as a result of increasingly extreme high temperatures. The number of areas populated by bumblebees has fallen 46 percent in North America and 17 percent in Europe. The data