Bumblebee Queens Survive Floods by Breathing Water and Slowing Metabolism
New research shows Bombus impatiens queen bees can survive extended submersion during diapause by extracting oxygen from water (likely via a gill-like structure), using anaerobic metabolism and profound metabolic depression to dramatically cut energy needs; in lab tests, CO2 production dropped from about 15.4 to 2.4 µL h-1 g-1 after eight days underwater, illustrating a remarkable flood-tolerance strategy that could help colonies weather crises and hints at resilience in other terrestrial insects; the study is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.