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<p>Climate change has narrowed the range where bumblebees are found in North America and Europe in recent decades, according to a study published Thursday.</p><p>The paper, published in the journal Science, suggests that warming temperatures have caused bumblebee populations to retreat from the southern limits of their travels by as much as 190 miles since the 1970s.</p><p>Logic would suggest that the northern reaches of their home turf would shift to higher latitudes by a corresponding distance. But that has not happened, leading researchers to think that the more northern habitats may be less hospitable to them.</p><p>&#8220;Bumblebee species across Europe and North America are declining at continental scales,&#8221; Jeremy Kerr a conservation biologist at the University of Ottawa in Canada who was the lead author of the report, said at a news conference. &#8220;And our data suggest that climate change plays a leading, or perhaps the leading, role in this trend.&#8221;</p><p>Not all entomologists agree with the findings, saying that the paper offers evidence of a correlation between climate change and waning bumblebee population ranges, but does not make the case that warming temperatures are the main cause. Instead, they say that a multitude of factors contribute to the bumblebees&#8217; shrinking borders, and that a changing climate may be just one factor.</p><p>For the study, the researchers constructed a database that contained more than 420,000 observations of 67 different European and North American bumblebee species, including when and where they were found. They compared population changes from 1974 to 2010, when temperatures began to warm, with changes from 1901 to 1974, when human-caused climate change was less of a factor. They found that the southernmost range of bumblebees retreated north at a rate of about 3 miles per year.</p><p>&#8220;One of the most striking results was that trends were often indistinguishable between Europe and North America,&#8221; said Paul Galpern, a landscape ecologist from the University of Calgary and a co-author of the paper. &#8220;Bumblebee species are responding quite similarly across continents since climate change began to really accelerate from 1975,&#8221; he said.</p><p>Sydney Cameron, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in bumblebee conservation, called the study &#8220;noteworthy&#8221; for its vast data set and expansive range, but disputed its findings.</p><p>Climate change, she said, might be a factor in the potential shrinking of bumblebee population ranges, but it is too early to say for certain. &#8220;It&#8217;s correlative, not causal; they cannot say that a 2-degree climate change caused these patterns,&#8221; she added, referring to an approximate Celsius reading for the average temperature warming across the regions.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Nicholas St. Fleur</p><p>The New York Times</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach the arts and entertainment department at <a href="mailto:ae@www.timesleader.com">ae@www.timesleader.com</a> or at 570-991-6111.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Is climate change shrinking where bumblebees range?