Beyond ‘Save The Bees’

New Mexico’s desert may look unforgiving, but for bees, it holds a remarkable amount of life. 

Across the state, particularly in the Chihuahuan Desert, native bees occupy ecological niches, and researchers are still working to understand. Some species have yet to be formally named, while others remain so poorly documented that scientists cannot say with certainty how their populations are changing. For New Mexico State University researchers Ashley Rohde and Scarlet Sellers, that largely unseen diversity is at the center of work examining the state’s native pollinators and what environmental change could mean for them. 

“When people hear ‘save the bees,’ they often think about honey bees because those are the bees that people have had the most interactions with and the most knowledge about,” said Rohde, a postdoctoral researcher at NMSU. 

Honey bees remain important to agriculture, she said, but Rohde and Sellers focus on wild, native bees. New Mexico’s arid landscapes support an especially wide variety of them, making the state an important place for researchers trying to understand pollinator diversity. 

“We have more different species of bees here than in most places around the world,” Rohde said. “In fact, they’re so poorly studied that many of them haven’t even been named yet.” 

That lack of information makes determining which populations are struggling, and why it is considerably harder. Drought, shifting weather patterns, development, and pesticide use can affect species differently depending on where and how they live. 

Some pollinators with limited ranges are particularly vulnerable. Rohde pointed to the endangered Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly near Cloudcroft, which she said researchers have not detected in the wild since 2022. That does not mean the butterfly is extinct, she said, but its population has become so rare that researchers are concerned it could disappear without appropriate intervention. 

For Sellers, a Ph.D. candidate in NMSU’s Department of Biology, some of those questions are playing out in the state’s mountains. Her research examines bumble bees in higher-elevation areas, including the Sacramento Mountains and Gila National Forest, and how populations separated across the landscape may remain genetically connected. Those cooler habitats can become particularly important as temperatures rise. Species may respond by moving to higher elevations, Sellers said, but that strategy eventually reaches a physical limit. 

“If they’re already on the tops of mountains, there’s kind of nowhere else to go once you reach the top,” she said. 

Conditions in the desert create another challenge. Sellers said some bees spend long periods underground in a dormant state, emerging after rainfall when flowering plants provide the food they need. Some species can remain dormant for multiple years to withstand drought, but increasingly prolonged dry periods could disrupt that cycle. 

Even then, researchers have only part of the picture. Rohde said much of a bee’s life can occur underground, making it difficult to determine how changing conditions affect it before it emerges. 

“A big challenge in bee research is that these are much easier to research when they’re out moving around pollinating flowers because we can see them and we can actually access them,” Rohde said. 

What happens to those populations can extend well beyond the bees themselves. Native pollinators help plants reproduce, supporting biological communities that other species rely on for food and habitat. Losing important pollinators, Rohde said, can ultimately change the vegetation within an ecosystem. 

“The idea is that if all the pollinators go away, then all of the plants that require pollination by animals also go away,” she said. “That’s going to be a foundational shift and probably a pretty catastrophic shift.” 

Recent changes in New Mexico have also created new opportunities for insect conservation. Rohde said expanded access to state wildlife funding could support research that has historically competed for limited resources while signaling a broader shift in how insects are viewed. 

“It really is an indication of a shift in interest in the New Mexico Legislature, but also just for New Mexicans in general that we’re recognizing that insects are important,” Rohde said. 

Residents can contribute to that work, too. The New Mexico Bumble Bee Atlas, created and managed by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, trains community scientists to document bumble bees across the state, while Sellers said observations uploaded to iNaturalist can provide researchers with useful information about where and when species are being found. 

Individual actions such as reducing pesticide use can help, Rohde said, but meaningful conservation also requires people to think beyond their own yards. 

“We really need to be working with a community if we want to see the needle move on any sort of pollinator conservation,” she said. 

For Rohde and Sellers, that begins with recognizing just how much life is hidden behind the word “bee.” 

“We’ve got this very special resource in New Mexico that other places don’t have,” Rohde said. “This is one of the things that I think we should really be cherishing — one of our natural resources that we should be cherishing and protecting, simply because it’s something that makes New Mexico special.”