A United Nations' organization today issued a global pollinator health report and the news was not good.

The two-year global assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) lamented the decline in pollinators due to such human-driven factors  as habitat loss, pesticides, and  malnutrition. These and other culprits, including pests, invasive species and climate change, can mean extinction of many species.

Major news organizations quickly sought input from experts, including two UC Davis entomologists: native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, who was interviewed by KGO Radio, San Francisco, and pollination ecologist Neal Williams, associate professor of entomology, who provided comments to The Washington Post.

It's not only the pollinators that are under siege. So are "the livelihoods and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of food supplies," according to the Feb. 26 IPBES report.

The assessment,  "Thematic Assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production," is the first issued by the four-year-old IPBES, which spans 124 member nations. Seventy-seven experts participated, drawing information from 3000 scientific papers.

"Pollinators are important contributors to world food production and nutritional security," said Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca, Ph.D., co-chair of the assessment and senior professor at the University of São Paulo. "Their health is directly linked to our own well-being."

Numbers released by IPBES help tell the story:

• 20,000 – Number of species of wild bees. There are also some species of butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles, birds, bats and other vertebrates that contribute to pollination.
• 75 Percent – Percentage of the world's food crops that depend at least in part on pollination.
• 235 billion to $577 billion – Annual value of global crops directly affected by pollinators.
• 300 Percent – Increase in volume of agricultural production dependent on animal pollination in the past 50 years.
• Almost 90 Percent – Percentage of wild flowering plants that depend to some extent on animal pollination.
• 1.6 million tons – Annual honey production from the western honeybee.
• 16.5 Percent – Percentage of vertebrate pollinators threatened with extinction globally.
• 40 Percent (plus) – Percentage of invertebrate pollinator species – particularly bees and butterflies – facing extinction.

"In addition to food crops, pollinators contribute to crops that provide biofuels (e.g. canola and palm oils), fibers (e.g cotton), medicines, forage for livestock, and construction materials. Some species also provide materials such as beeswax for candles and musical instruments, and arts and crafts," IPBES related.

The report indicated that pesticides, pests and diseases pose a special threat to managed bees "but the risk can be reduced through better disease detection and management, and regulations relating to trade and movement of bees."

Pollinators need to be protected, the report emphasized. We can help safeguard our pollinators by: 

• Maintaining or creating greater diversity of pollinator habitats in agricultural and urban landscapes;
• Supporting traditional practices that manage habitat patchiness, crop rotation, and coproduction between science and indigenous local knowledge;
• Education and exchange of knowledge among farmers, scientists, industry, communities, and the general public;
• Decreasing exposure of pollinators to pesticides by reducing their usage, seeking alternative forms of pest control, and adopting a range of specific application practices, including technologies to reduce pesticide drift; and
• Improving managed bee husbandry for pathogen control, coupled with better regulation of trade and use of commercial pollinators 

Additional findings:

• A high diversity of wild pollinators contributes to increased stability in pollination, even when managed bees are present in high numbers.
• Crop yields depend on both wild and managed species.
• The western honey bee is the most widespread managed pollinator in the world, producing an estimated 1.6 million tons of honey annually.  
• The number of beehives has increased globally over the past 50 years, but a decrease in hives has occurred in many European and North American countries.
• Climate change has led to changes in the distribution of many pollinating bumblebees and butterflies and the plants that depend upon them 

Neal Williams explained to The Washington Post in an email: "Hospitable landscapes are ones where there are suitable nesting habitats for diverse pollinator species, and where consistent forage resources are accessible (within the flight range) of the bees throughout their flight seasons."

Robbin Thorp told KGO that "through agricultural intensification, we have a lost a lot of habitat for native pollinators." He advocated more nesting habitat for bees. And, he said, "we need to be cautious whenever we apply pesticides" because pesticides are designed to kill insects, and bees are insects. 

Honey bees, Thorp said, are just one species of about 20,000 bees in the world. "Most native bees are solitary bees that nest in the ground. They don't have a queen, they don't make honey, but they are very important in our environment." 

Protecting our pollinators is crucial. They are, as IPBES, said, "economically, socially and culturally important."

Imagine you're a tardigrade, aka water bear or moss piglet.

You're microscopic but you're nearly indestructible. You can survive being heated to 304 degrees Fahrenheit or being chilled for days at -328 F. And if you're frozen for 30 years, you can still reproduce.

The water bear "has to be one of the most peculiar and indestructible groups of animals known," writes Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis, in her current Bohart Museum Society newsletter.

They belong to their own phyllum, the Tardigrada, and "today they are thought to be most closely related to arthropods and velvet worms (Onychophora)...although for many years, tardigrades were thought to be related to nematode worms because of the structure of the mouth."

To date, there are some 1,500 described species throughout the world.

"Tardigrades can survive high pressures of more than 1,200 atmospheres found in the bottom of the abyss," she points out. "They can tolerate 1,000 times more ionizing radiation than other animals."

Kimsey doesn't have to go far to see or study tardigrades. The Bohart Museum houses one of the largest collections of tardigrades in the world, with about 25,00o slide-mounted specimens. She and and collaborator Carl Johannsen work on a National Science Foundation grant "to database and conserve" the collection.

"This collection is the result of years of collecting, mounting, imaging, and identifying by former collection manager Bob Schuster and emeritus professor Al Grigarick and their collaborators," she says.

What's the water bear look like? It has a barrel-shaped body, eight pudgy legs, and the adults range from 0.3 to 0.5 mm in length, but the largest is...ready for this...only 1.2 mm long.

Five segments make up the body, including the head. "The last four body segments each has a pair of legs," Kimsey says. "Their legs are short and wide, lack joints and end in our to eight claws.'

Definitely not your average teddy bear.

Where are they found? They're easiest to find on lichens and mosses,Kimsey says, but they can also be found on beaches, in thesubtidal zone, freshwater sediments, soil, hot springs and even on barnacles," the professor says. They've been found "high in the Himalayas to down in the deep sea." They've even been found in the interior of Antarctica.

What do they eat? Most feed on plants or bacteria "but some are predators on smaller tardigrades."

How do they eat? They use the stylets in their tubular mouth (snout) to pierce "individual plant or bacterial ells or small invertebrates."

The New York Times published a piece on the unique water bear in its Feb. 22 edition: Even 30 Years of Deep Freeze Can't Stop the ‘Water Bear'

Reporter Cathy Gulli described a tardigrade and a tardigrade egg surviving after being frozen for 30 years. Scientists recently published that work in the journal Cryobiology. It was featured in EurekAlert.

"The tardigrade and egg were retrieved from frozen moss in Antarctica in November 1983, and remained in a state of 'cryptobiosis'—in which metabolic activity is temporarily shut down—until May 2014," Gulli wrote.  Then the researchers defrosted and rehydrated the moss. The adult survived and it promptly laid 19 eggs and most of those eggs hatched.  The frozen egg also survived and as an adult, laid 15 and about half survived. See video on EurekAlert.

How can they survive such extreme temperatures?

Kimsey relates that Thomas Brooby, writing in the Publications of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that one of the reasons may be due to "horizontal gene transfer," that they acquire foreign genes.  About one-sixth of the tardigrade genes were acquired from other organisms, such as bacteria.

And the origin of the tardigrades (some of which have been found in the interior of the Antarctica continent and may have been cryptobiotic for thousands of years)?

 "Carl and I have differing opinions on the origins of tardigrades," Kimsey mused. "I think they originated on Mars. Carl thinks Alpha Centauri is more likely. I'm not sure he's not right."

(Editor's Note: Stuffed animals representing the water bears are available for sale in the Bohart Museum gift shop. The Bohart Museum Society newsletter is distributed to members. A limited number of copies is available at the Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academy Surge Building on Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.)

Medical entomologists are learning more and more about Aedes aegypti, the daytime-biting mosquito that prefers human blood.

The mosquito transmits the Zika virus, currently "the" hot medical topic.

But it also transmits dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya viruses.

Especially dengue.

“Dengue infects 400 million people worldwide each year, and 4 billion people or nearly half of the world's population are at risk for dengue,” says medical entomologist Thomas Scott, distinguished professor and now emeritus, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

Scott, who has studied dengue more than 25 years and is recognized as the leading expert in the ecology and epidemiology of the disease, emphasizes that “There is no vaccine nor drug that is effective against this virus." There are four serotypes: DENV-1 through DENV-4.

Now for the groundbreaking news.

Scott and his colleagues just published a study in the Public Library of Science (PLOS), Neglected Tropical Diseases, that is sure to rock the world of everyone who has ever contracted dengue.

Basically, the 13-member research team, based at its study site in Iquitos, Peru, has shattered the long-held assumption that once you're been infected with a particular dengue serotype, you can't get that particular dengue seroytpe again.

Well, yes, you can. "Lifetime of immunity" is false.

“Our most significant result from this study is that immunity to dengue viruses does not always provide perfect protection from reinfection,” Scott said. “The public health implications include evaluation of dengue vaccines, interpretation of a person's virus exposure history and susceptibility to new infections, and design of dengue surveillance programs.” 

“Our data indicate that protection from homologous DENV re-infection may be incomplete in some circumstances, which provides context for the limited vaccine efficacy against DENV-2 in recent trials,” the research team wrote. “Further studies are warranted to confirm this phenomenon and to evaluate the potential role of incomplete homologous protection in DENV transmission dynamics.” 

Former UC Davis researcher Steve Stoddard and senior author of the paper said it well:

“It has long been thought that infection with any one of the viruses produced lifetime immunity to that virus.  This finding could help explain results of dengue vaccine trials that showed poor efficacy against one of the four serotype. It also has broad implications for vaccine development.”

 The research team investigated the "validity of the fundamental assumption" by analyzing a large epidemic caused by a new strain of DENV-2 that invaded Iquitos, Peru, in 2010-2011, 15 years after the first outbreak of DENV-2 in the region.

Read more about the research on the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology website and in PLOS, Neglected Tropical Diseases.

If you're anywhere near an almond orchard, you've probably heard the steady buzz.

That's the soothing sound of honey bees gathering food for their colony--and in the process, pollinating almonds.

The buzz is to bees what a purr is to a cat.

On the UC Davis campus, almonds are still blooming--on Bee Biology Road and in the UC Davis Arboretum, among other sites.

But the almond pollination season that began around Valentine's Day in California  is almost over. By mid-March, it's fini.

The solo almond tree that bloomed in early January in the Benicia State Recreation Area is already leafed out. It's the perfect hot spot: sun-warmed asphalt, southern exposure and no neighbors to shade it.

Meanwhile, the Almond Board of California (ABC) newsroom is buzzing, too.

"Through research we know that almond pollen is very nutritious for honey bees," said Bob Curtis, director of agricultural affairs at ABC said in a news release. "Research also shows that bee hives increase in strength during the time they spend pollinating almonds. This allows many beekeepers to then split their hives and grow their apiaries, giving the beekeepers and their bees a good foundation for the upcoming year. After their stay in the almond orchards, bees move on to pollinate more than 90 other crops in our state and elsewhere in the nation."

California now has 1 million acres of almonds, and each acre requires two bee hives for pollination. And how many almond growers are there in the state? More than 6,000, according to ABC.

"While good soil, climate, and other factors are crucial, without honey bees to pollinate our trees each spring, there would be no almonds," said Curtis in the news release. "And without almond blossoms, the bees would lose their first source of natural pollen each year. It's a win-win relationship."

Back in 2014, almond growers, beekeepers, bee breeders and scientists got together and hammered out the "Honey Bee Best Management Practices (BMPs) for California Almonds."

Extension apiculturist (now emeritus) Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, participated in that major endeavor.

In the news release, Mussen said that the almond industry  is "responding strongly on honey bee health and, in particular, pesticide use and considerations during bloom. He said that the BMPs "go far beyond the almond orchard, providing important insights for all crops when it comes to promoting honey bee health."

"Since their release, the BMPs have been shared at over 70 industry meetings with more than 7,000 copies distributed to almond farmers and beekeepers alike," according to the ABC news release.  "The strong, favorable response to the BMPs marks another milestone in the effort to protect honey bee health and preserve the mutually beneficial relationship between honey bees and almonds." 

Without bees, no almonds, so the relationship between the almond growers and the beekeepers must continue to be nurtured, cultivated and strengthened.

You can access the ABC's Honey Bee BMPs at Almonds.com/BeeBMPs. And for more information about the pollination partnership between honey bees and almonds, access  "The Buzz on Bees + Almonds."

Meanwhile, listen to the bees buzz, a sure sign of winter's demise and spring's promise.