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= AMMY AHMED =

Pollinator Decline
The title of my article with link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollinator_decline

this is just my little summary of the article, I used some of the original content from the actual wikipedia page - as well as did some of my own research with new citations added to the end. I also organized it and the table of contents to make it easier for the readers like the wiki page said it wanted.

Pollinator Decline refers to the reduction in abundance of many different insect and animal pollinators in many ecosystems that started the last few years worldwide until present day. Pollinators are animals such as bees, butterflies, moths, bats and even beetles that allow cross-pollination. cross-pollination is a key component of global biodiversity and providing vital ecosystem services to crops and wild plants. This occurs by moving pollen from the male anthers of a flower to the female stigma of a flower to accomplish fertilization, thereby participating in the sexual reproduction of many plants and resulting in the pollination of 90% of flowering plants. Since plants are the primary food source for animals, the reduction of one of the primary pollination agents, or even their possible disappearance, has raised concern and conservation of pollinators has become part of biodiversity conservation efforts.

Contents
Possible Explanations for decline

1. Pesticide Use

2. Loss of Habitat

3. Air Pollution

4. Changes in seasonal behavior

Consequences of Pollinator Decline

1. Nutritional Consequences

Solutions

1. Conservation and Restoration

2. Research

3. Activism

Possible Explanations for Decline
Scientists agree there are multiple, interacting causes at play for decline in our pollinators. One of the biggest contributors to pollination are bees. This includes pesticide use, habitat destruction and bad nutrition, as well as pathogen overload

(on the original wikipedia page the section it said "This section contains information of unclear or questionable importance or relevance to the article's subject matter. Please help improve this section by clarifying or removing superfluous information" and it was under a specific subtopic under possible explanations. I decided to do more research and find the main underlying explanations for decline in each article, and summed it down to three which were also included in the original article, but I made it more organized and less scattered. Filled it with more content relating to what they are reading about instead of other things. There was too much scatter with this one so I did it this way)

Pesticide Use
Studies have linked neonicotinoid pesticide exposure to bee health decline. Neonicontinoid and other pesticides conflict with honey bees brains which affect their ability to navigate. Pesticides affect their feeding behavior as well which result in preventing bees from collecting enough food to produce new queens and over all hive activity. Neonicotinoids are taken up by a plants vascular system and is expressed through pollen, nectar and guttation droplets. Scientists say they are getting chronically poisoned at sublethal levels due to ingesting the contaminated pollen, nectar and water (guttation droplets) which are bees food and drink. Bees can also be acutely poisoned by the planter dust contaminated with pesticides and planted in a cornfield for bees to fly through. Pesticides were found as a huge cause in the decline in bees and other pollinators in 2006, when the term colony collapse disorder (CCD) came to be. This is where beekeepers bees' would just start to disappear. They would start to report extraordinary losses averaging 29 to 45 percent per year which or them is double what is considered normal. In the past 6 years leading up to 2013, more than ten million beehives were lost due to this crisis. In March, 2012, commercial beekeepers and environmental organizations filed an emergency legal petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suspend use of clothianidin, urging the agency to adopt safeguards. The legal petition, supported by over one million citizen petition signatures, targets the pesticide for its harmful impacts on honey bees. The petition points to the fact that the EPA failed to follow its own regulations. EPA granted a conditional, or temporary, registration of clothianidin in 2003 without a field study establishing that the pesticide would have no "unreasonable adverse effects" on pollinators. The conditional registration was contingent upon the submission of an acceptable field study, but this requirement has not been met. EPA continues to allow the use of clothianidin nine years after acknowledging that it had an insufficient legal basis for initially allowing its use. Additionally, the product labels on pesticides containing clothianidin are inadequate to prevent excessive damage to non-target organisms, which is a violation of the requirements for using a pesticide and further warrants removing all such mislabeled pesticides from use.

Habitat Destruction and Bad Nutrition
Our pollinators face more of a chance to face extinction due to their habitat being destroyed as well as them dying due to malnourishment because of no access to natural food sources. Monoculture, which is an agricultural practice of planting one crop year after year leads to extreme malnourishment. With that being said, as well as the amount of pesticides in and around the agriculture... as well as the worlds dependency on livestock has rendered no less than fifty percent of the earths landmass to be uninhabitable for bees.

Pathogens
Varroa mites (Varroa spp.) are a ubiquitous parasite of honey bee (Apis spp.) colonies. They are common nearly everywhere honey bees are found, and every beekeeper should assume they have a Varroa infestation, if they are in a geographic area that has Varroa (Varroa mites are not established in Australia as of spring 2014). Varroa mites were first introduced to the western honey bee (Apis mellifera) about 70 years ago after bringing A. mellifera to the native range of the eastern honey bee (Apis cerana). Varroa mites (Varroa jacobsoni) in eastern honey bee colonies cause little damage. But after switching hosts and being dispersed across the world through natural and commercial transportation of honey bee colonies, Varroa has became a major western honey bee pest since the 1980’s. Varroa mites (Varroa destructor) are now the most serious pest of western honey bee colonies and one of the primary causes of honey bee decline (Dietemann et al. 2012). A western honey bee colony with Varroa, that is not treated to kill the pest, will likely die within one to three years (Korpela et al. 1993; Fries et al. 2006). Varroa mites attack honey bee colonies as an external parasite of adult and developing bees, by feeding on hemolymph (fluid of the circulatory system similar to blood), spreading disease, and reducing their lifespan. Evidence suggests that Varroa and their vectored viruses affect the immune response of honey bees, making them more susceptible to disease agents (Yang and Cox-Foster 2005). For more information on this topic see here. Mature female Varroa mites survive on immature and adult honey bees (worker, drone, and rarely queen), are reddish brown, and about the size of a pin head. Male mites are a smaller size and tan color, do not feed on bees, and are only found inside brood cells (Rosenkranz et al. 2010).

Consequences of Pollinator Decline
The consequences that occur due to pollinator decline can affect us gravely. It disrupts our food chain, there wont be anymore flowers, as well as how everything will lead into extinction after extinction when these animals have no where to live, and they are unable to pollinate. The value of animal pollination in human nutrition and food for wildlife is immense and difficult to quantify.

An estimated 87.5% of the world's flowering plant species are animal-pollinated, and 35% of crop production and 60% of crop plant species depend on animal pollinators. This includes the majority of fruits, many vegetables (or their seed crop), and secondary effects from legumes such as alfalfa and clover fed to livestock.

In 2000, Drs. Roger Morse and Nicholas Calderone of Cornell University attempted to quantify the effects of just one pollinator, the Western honey bee, on only US food crops. Their calculations came up with a figure of US $14.6 billion in food crop value. In 2009, another study calculated the worldwide value of pollination to agriculture. They calculated the costs using the proportion of each of 100 crops that need pollinators that would not be produced in case insect pollinators disappeared completely. The economic value of insect pollination was then of €153 billion. (needs to be edited - copied from original wiki)

Nutritional Consequences
(In the original article they have natural consequences before the possible explanations. This is what I thought and what I believed wikipedia thought was unorganized in the contents. So I rearranged the order and put the consequences after the causes. It makes more sense this way. then after knowing the consequences we can figure out solutions to fix it. This whole section for nutritional consequences has good sources and I wouldn't make any changes here.)

Several large-scale studies have been done to look at the nutritional consequences of pollinator decline. Since pollinators are responsible for propagating certain plants and crops, populations that are heavily reliant on those crops are at risk for malnutrition. As such, the size of the effect that pollinator decline has on an area depends on the local diet. According to a 2015 study published in the Public Library of Science, pollinator decline is most likely to have negative impacts on the nutritional health of an area when the people living there get the majority of their nutrients from crops that are heavily dependent on pollinators, the affected people aren't already severely deficient in a nutrient or consuming significantly higher amounts of the nutrient than is recommended, they don't have access to other foods that could substitute the nutrients from the crops they're losing, and they don't have access to supplements, fortified foods, or targeted nutrition programs that could help ensure they are still getting adequate nutrients. In contrast, populations whose diets aren't heavily based on pollinator-dependent crops likely will not be affected by pollinator decline to the same extent.

A 2015 study done by the Harvard School of Public Health modeled what would happen should 100% of pollinators die off. In that scenario, 71 million people in low-income countries would become deficient in Vitamin A, and the Vitamin A intake of 2.2 billion people who are already consuming less than the recommended amount would further decline. Similarly, 173 million people would become deficient in folate, and 1.23 million people would further lessen their intake. Additionally, the global fruit supply would decrease by 22.9%, the global vegetable supply would decrease by 16.3%, and the global supply of nuts and seeds would decrease by 22.1%. This would lead to 1.42 million additional deaths each year from non-communicable and malnutrition related diseases, as well as 27 million disability-adjusted life years. In a less extreme scenario wherein only 50% of pollinators die off, 700,000 additional deaths would occur each year, as well as 13.2 million disability-adjusted years. A melon plant, a pollinator crop and a good source of Vitamin A In a 2014 study done in the United Kingdom, Vitamin A was identified as the most pollinator-dependent nutrient. Vitamin A deficiency is one of the biggest malnutrition concerns when it comes to pollinator decline, as Vitamin A is one of the leading causes of blindness, accounting for 500,000 cases annually. Vitamin A deficiency is also responsible for the deaths of approximately 800,000 women and children worldwide, as well as between 20% and 24% of deaths from measles, diarrhea, and malaria. An estimated 70% of dietary Vitamin A worldwide is found in crops that are animal pollinated.

Folate deficiency, a type of Vitamin B, is also of concern. An estimated 55% of folate is found in animal-pollinated crops such as beans and dark, leafy, green vegetables. Folate is highly recommended for pregnant women, as it helps to prevent neural tube defects in fetuses.

Calcium, fluoride, and iron deficiencies are also likely consequences of pollinator decline. Animal pollinators are responsible for 9%, 20%, and 29% of fruits and nuts that contain calcium, fluoride, and iron, respectively. While those percentages aren't high compared to how much of those nutrients come from meat and dairy, fruits and nuts are more bioavailable. More so, meat and dairy production is expensive, inefficient, and not feasible in certain areas. Iron deficiency is the most common micronutrient deficiency worldwide, leading to preventable cognitive impairment and infection.

Additionally, 74% of all globally produced lipids are found in oils from plants that are animal pollinated, as well as 98% of Vitamin C.

Conservation and Restoration
(In the original article for conservation and restoration, it had alot of problems it didn't have any proof or back of the facts they were saying, lack of citations, and information. So I just did a little bit of my own research for this part and created my own subtopic on this)

NRCS which stands for "Natural Resources Conservation Service" is working with agricultural producers to combat future declines by helping them to implement conservation practices that provide forage for honey bees while enhancing habitat for other pollinators and wildlife and improving the quality of water, air and soil. NRCS launched the effort in 2014, and assistance is available for producers in Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. It is now in its third year on conservation plans. What the NRCS is doing is providing technical and financial assistance to help producers provide safe and diverse food sources for honey bees. For example, NRCS helps producers voluntarily implement conservation practices such as planting cover crops, planting wildflowers and native grasses in buffers and areas not in production, and improving management of grazing lands. In total, more than three dozen NRCS conservation practices provide benefits to pollinators like honey bees. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program(EQIP), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP) provide assistance to help implement these practices. To accelerate conservation to benefit honey bees, NRCS is targeting conservation efforts to where more than two-thirds of the populations spends summer months, pollinating crops and building strength to survive winter.

In order to design effective restorations, it would be useful to know what factor(s) most often limit bee population size, so that these factor(s) could be restored. The resources bees require to complete their life cycle can be roughly divided into those related to nesting (the appropriate substrate, such as bare soil, stems, or cavities, and for some species the materials necessary to create the nest interior, such as leave or resin), and those related to foraging on ﬂowers (pollen and nectar)

Research
"SmartBees". The SmartBees Consortium ·. Retrieved 31 August 2015.

The Obama administration's 2015 Budget also recommended to "enhance research at USDA and through public-private grants, ... and increase funding for surveys to determine the impacts on pollinator losses".

SmartBees is a European research project of 16 entities (universities, research institutions and companies) funded by the EU, headquartered in Berlin. Its goal is to elicit causes of resistance to CCD, develop breeding to increase CCD resistance and to counteract the replacement of many native European bees with only two specific races.

CoLOSS (Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes) is an international, non-profit association headquartered in Bern, Switzerland to "improve the well-being of bees at a global level", composed of researchers, veterinarians, agriculture extension specialists, and students from 69 countries. Their 3 core projects are standardization of methods for studying the honey bee, colony loss monitoring and B-RAP (Bridging Research and Practice).

Activism
I want to take out activism because it sounded like the authors opinion. It is not an actual solution but it is just a suggestion, theres nothing really proved or written about that activism is a pure solution to this whereas the research and conservation and restoration are actual solutions.