Widespread reports of a decline in the population of bees and other flower-visiting animals have aroused fear and speculation¹（推测，思索） that pollination²（授粉） is also likely on the decline. A recent University of Toronto study provides the first long-term evidence of a downward trend（下跌趋势） in pollination, while also pointing to climate change as a possible contributor. "Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation³（冬眠） is a more important factor," says James Thomson, a scientist with U of T's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary⁴ Biology.

Thomson's 17-year examination of the wild lily（百合花） in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado is one of the longest-term studies of pollination ever done. It reveals a progressive decline in pollination over the years, with particularly noteworthy（值得注意的，显著的） pollination deficits⁵ early in the season. The study will be published in Philosophical⁶ Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences on September 6.

Three times each year, Thomson compared the fruiting rate of unmanipulated flowers to that of flowers that are supplementally pollinated by hand. "Early in the year, when bumble bee queens are still hibernating⁷, the fruiting rates are especially low," he says. "This is sobering（清醒的，冷静的） because it suggests that pollination is vulnerable even in a relatively⁸ pristine⁹（原始的） environment that is free of pesticides¹⁰ and human disturbance¹¹ but still subject to climate change."

Thomson began his long-term studies in the late 1980s after purchasing a remote plot of land and building a log cabin in the middle of a meadow（草地，牧场） full of glacier¹² lilies. His work has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.