鑽石舞台

Bees suddenly fell silent when the sun disappeared during last year's solar eclipse—perhaps because they were tricked into night mode. Christopher Intagliata reports.

Last summer's total solar eclipse sliced right through Columbia, Missouri. "It was remarkable. As a biologist I generally reserve that word 'remarkable' for biological phenomena."

Candace Galen is based at the University of Missouri, in Columbia. And, being a biologist, she thought, why not use this astronomical phenomenon to study a biological one? Specifically: as the skies darkened, would daytime pollinators, like bumblebees and honeybees, call it quits?

"What better activity during an eclipse than to go out with a recorder and record the bees? <laughter>"

So Galen asked 400 citizen scientists—including young students—to place audio recorders in 16 flower patches along the path of totality, in Oregon, Idaho and Missouri. When they analyzed the audio, they found that during partial eclipse, bee buzzing continued. But when totality hit, the bees went silent…and only the conversational buzz of human observers could be heard. Then, as the moon passed and the sun again lit up the sky, the bees regained their buzz.

The full write-up is in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America.

Galen and her colleagues did notice one strange detail: the individual buzzes lasted longer than normal during the partial eclipse periods…[full transcript]