Assessing captive and wild bumble bee health in Southern Ontario through parasite sampling and analysis

Wildlife Preservation Canada’s (WPC’s) Bumble Bee Recovery Program is mainly focused on the recovery of the Special Concern (may become threatened or endangered) yellow-banded bumble bee (Bombus terricola). The intern will be taking on a project that will help WPC assess the health of bumble bee queens in the wild and queens that are being used in WPC’s conservation breeding program. The intern will be sampling and analyzing bumble bee feces for parasites within the field to assess bumble bee communities’ health and within WPC’s Bumble Bee Conservation Lab to assess the health of queens coming into the program. Several bumble bee parasites are known to negatively impact multiple stages of their lifecycle, including their reproduction and ability to survive throughout the winter (i.e. overwintering). The intern will also be creating protocols on sampling and analyzing these fecal samples as this technique is new to WPC. This technique will be integrated into WPC’s internal framework to continuously monitor the health of their conservation breeding colonies, which is crucial to achieve the wider project goal of releasing declining bumble bees to increase populations to levels that are needed for adequate ecosystem functioning (e.g. pollination of crops and wildflowers).

Faculty Supervisor:

J. Scott MacIvor

Student:

Partner:

Wildlife Preservation Canada

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Toronto

Program: