Futures studies

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Moore's law is an example of futures studies; it is a statistical collection of past and present trends with the goal of accurately extrapolating future trends.

Futures studies (also called futurology) is the study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. There is a debate as to whether this discipline is an art or science. In general, it can be considered as a branch of the social sciences and parallel to the field of history. History studies the past, futures studies considers the future. Futures studies (colloquially called "futures" by many of the field's practitioners) seeks to understand what is likely to continue and what could plausibly change. Part of the discipline thus seeks a systematic and pattern-based understanding of past and present, and to determine the likelihood of future events and trends.^[1] Unlike the physical sciences where a narrower, more specified system is studied, futures studies concerns a much bigger and more complex world system. The methodology and knowledge are much less proven as compared to natural science or even social science like sociology, economics, and political science.

Overview

Futures studies is an interdisciplinary field, studying yesterday's and today's changes, and aggregating and analyzing both lay and professional strategies and opinions with respect to tomorrow. It includes analyzing the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in an attempt to develop foresight and to map possible futures. Around the world the field is variously referred to as futures studies, strategic foresight, futuristics, futures thinking, futuring, and futurology. Futures studies and strategic foresight are the academic field's most commonly used terms in the English-speaking world.

Foresight was the original term and was first used in this sense by H.G. Wells in 1932.^[2] "Futurology" is a term common in encyclopedias, though it is used almost exclusively by nonpractitioners today, at least in the English-speaking world. "Futurology" is defined as the "study of the future."^[3] The term was coined by German professor Ossip K. Flechtheim^{[citation needed]} in the mid-1940s, who proposed it as a new branch of knowledge that would include a new science of probability. This term may have fallen from favor in recent decades because modern practitioners stress the importance of alternative and plural futures, rather than one monolithic future, and the limitations of prediction and probability, versus the creation of possible and preferable futures.^{[citation needed]}

Three factors usually distinguish futures studies from the research conducted by other disciplines (although all of these disciplines overlap, to differing degrees). First, futures studies often examines not only possible but also probable, preferable, and "wild card" futures. Second, futures studies typically attempts to gain a holistic or systemic view based on insights from a range of different disciplines. Third, futures studies challenges and unpacks the assumptions behind dominant and contending views of the future. The future thus is not empty but fraught with hidden assumptions. For example, many people expect the collapse of the Earth's ecosystem in the near future, while others believe the current ecosystem will survive indefinitely. A foresight approach would seek to analyze and highlight the assumptions underpinning such views.

Futures studies does not generally focus on short term predictions such as interest rates over the next business cycle, or of managers or investors with short-term time horizons. Most strategic planning, which develops operational plans for preferred futures with time horizons of one to three years, is also not considered futures. Plans and strategies with longer time horizons that specifically attempt to anticipate possible future events are definitely part of the field.

The futures field also excludes those who make future predictions through professed supernatural means. At the same time, it does seek to understand the models such groups use and the interpretations they give to these models.

History

Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah^[4] argue in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians that the search for grand patterns of social change goes all the way back to Ssu-Ma Chien (145-90BC) and his theory of the cycles of virtue, although the work of Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) such as The Muqaddimah^[5] would be an example that is perhaps more intelligible to modern sociology. Some intellectual foundations of futures studies appeared in the mid-19th century; according to Wendell Bell, Comte's discussion of the metapatterns of social change presages futures studies as a scholarly dialogue.^[6]

The first works that attempt to make systematic predictions for the future were written in the 18th century. Memoirs of the Twentieth Century written by Samuel Madden in 1733, takes the form of a series of diplomatic letters written in 1997 and 1998 from British representatives in the foreign cities of Constantinople, Rome, Paris, and Moscow.^[7] However, the technology of the 20th century is identical to that of Madden's own era - the focus is instead on the political and religious state of the world in the future. Madden went on to write The Reign of George VI, 1900 to 1925, where (in the context of the boom in canal construction at the time) he envisioned a large network of waterways that would radically transform patterns of living - "Villages grew into towns and towns became cities".^[8]

The genre of science fiction became established towards the end of the 19th century, with notable writers, including Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, setting their stories in an imagined future world.

Origins

H. G. Wells first advocated for 'future studies', in a lecture delivered in 1902.

According to W. Warren Wagar, the founder of future studies was H. G. Wells. His Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought: An Experiment in Prophecy, was first serially published in The Fortnightly Review in 1901.^[9] Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, and the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that "my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea").^[10][11]

Moving from narrow technological predictions, Wells envisioned the eventual collapse of the capitalist world system after a series of destructive total wars. From this havoc would ultimately emerge a world of peace and plenty, controlled by competent technocrats.^[9]

The work was a bestseller, and Wells was invited to deliver a lecture at the Royal Institution in 1902, entitled The Discovery of the Future. The lecture was well-received and was soon republished in book form. He advocated for the establishment of a new academic study of the future that would be grounded in scientific methodology rather than just speculation. He argued that a scientifically ordered vision of the future "will be just as certain, just as strictly science, and perhaps just as detailed as the picture that has been built up within the last hundred years to make the geological past." Although conscious of the difficulty in arriving at entirely accurate predictions, he thought that it would still be possible to arrive at a "working knowledge of things in the future".^[9]

In his fictional works, Wells predicted the invention and use of the atomic bomb in The World Set Free (1914).^[12] In The Shape of Things to Come (1933) the impending World War and cities destroyed by aerial bombardment was depicted.^[13] However, he didn't stop advocating for the establishment of a futures science. In a 1933 BBC broadcast he called for the establishment of "Departments and Professors of Foresight", foreshadowing the development of modern academic futures studies by approximately 40 years.^[2]

Emergence

Futures studies emerged as an academic discipline in the mid-1960s. First-generation futurists included Herman Kahn, an American Cold War strategist who wrote On Thermonuclear War (1960), Thinking about the unthinkable (1962) and The Year 2000: a framework for speculation on the next thirty-three years (1967); Bertrand de Jouvenel, a French economist who founded Futuribles International in 1960; and Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian-British scientist who wrote Inventing the Future (1963) and The Mature Society. A View of the Future (1972).^[6]

Future studies had a parallel origin with the birth of systems science in academia, and with the idea of national economic and political planning, most notably in France and the Soviet Union.^[6][14] In the 1950s, France was continuing to reconstruct their war-torn country. In the process, French scholars, philosophers, writers, and artists searched for what could constitute a more positive future for humanity. The Soviet Union similarly participated in postwar rebuilding, but did so in the context of an established national economic planning process, which also required a long-term, systemic statement of social goals. Future studies was therefore primarily engaged in national planning, and the construction of national symbols.

By contrast, in the United States of America, futures studies as a discipline emerged from the successful application of the tools and perspectives of systems analysis, especially with regard to quartermastering the war-effort. These differing origins account for an initial schism between futures studies in America and futures studies in Europe: U.S. practitioners focused on applied projects, quantitative tools and systems analysis, whereas Europeans preferred to investigate the long-range future of humanity and the Earth, what might constitute that future, what symbols and semantics might express it, and who might articulate these.^[15][16]

By the 1960s, academics, philosophers, writers and artists across the globe had begun to explore enough future scenarios so as to fashion a common dialogue. Inventors such as Buckminster Fuller also began highlighting the effect technology might have on global trends as time progressed. This discussion on the intersection of population growth, resource availability and use, economic growth, quality of life, and environmental sustainability – referred to as the "global problematique" – came to wide public attention with the publication of Limits to Growth, a study sponsored by the Club of Rome.^[17]

Further development

International dialogue became institutionalized in the form of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), founded in 1967, with the noted sociologist, Johan Galtung, serving as its first president. In the United States, the publisher Edward Cornish, concerned with these issues, started the World Future Society, an organization focused more on interested laypeople.

1975 saw the founding of the first graduate program in futures studies in the United States, the M.S. program in Futures Studies at the University of Houston–Clear Lake,^[18] which moved to main campus in 2007 and renamed the degree to Foresight. There followed a year later the M.A. Program in Public Policy in Alternative Futures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.^[19] The Hawaii program provides particular interest in the light of the schism in perspective between European and U.S. futurists; it bridges that schism by locating futures studies within a pedagogical space defined by neo-Marxism, critical political economic theory, and literary criticism. In the years following the foundation of these two programs, single courses in Futures Studies at all levels of education have proliferated, but complete programs occur only rarely.

As a transdisciplinary field, futures studies attracts generalists. This transdisciplinary nature can also cause problems, owing to it sometimes falling between the cracks of disciplinary boundaries; it also has caused some difficulty in achieving recognition within the traditional curricula of the sciences and the humanities. In contrast to "Futures Studies" at the undergraduate level, some graduate programs in strategic leadership or management offer masters or doctorate programs in "strategic foresight" for mid-career professionals, some even online. Nevertheless, comparatively few new PhDs graduate in Futures Studies each year.

The field currently faces the great challenge of creating a coherent conceptual framework, codified into a well-documented curriculum (or curricula) featuring widely accepted and consistent concepts and theoretical paradigms linked to quantitative and qualitative methods, exemplars of those research methods, and guidelines for their ethical and appropriate application within society. As an indication that previously disparate intellectual dialogues have in fact started converging into a recognizable discipline,^[20] at least six solidly-researched and well-accepted first attempts to synthesize a coherent framework for the field have appeared: Eleonora Masini's Why Futures Studies,^[21] James Dator's Advancing Futures Studies,^[22] Ziauddin Sardar's Rescuing all of our Futures,^[23] Sohail Inayatullah's Questioning the future,^[24] Richard A. Slaughter's The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies,^[25] a collection of essays by senior practitioners, and Wendell Bell's two-volume work, The Foundations of Futures Studies.^[26]

Probability and predictability

Some aspects of the future, such as celestial mechanics, are highly predictable, and may even be described by relatively simple mathematical models. At present however, science has yielded only a special minority of such "easy to predict" physical processes. Theories such as chaos theory, nonlinear science and standard evolutionary theory have allowed us to understand many complex systems as contingent (sensitively dependent on complex environmental conditions) and stochastic (random within constraints), making the vast majority of future events unpredictable, in any specific case.

Not surprisingly, the tension between predictability and unpredictability is a source of controversy and conflict among futures studies scholars and practitioners. Some argue that the future is essentially unpredictable, and that "the best way to predict the future is to create it." Others believe, as Flechtheim, that advances in science, probability, modeling and statistics will allow us to continue to improve our understanding of probable futures, while this area presently remains less well developed than methods for exploring possible and preferable futures.

As an example, consider the process of electing the president of the United States. At one level we observe that any U.S. citizen over 35 may run for president, so this process may appear too unconstrained for useful prediction. Yet further investigation demonstrates that only certain public individuals (current and former presidents and vice presidents, senators, state governors, popular military commanders, mayors of very large cities, etc.) receive the appropriate "social credentials" that are historical prerequisites for election. Thus with a minimum of effort at formulating the problem for statistical prediction, a much reduced pool of candidates can be described, improving our probabilistic foresight. Applying further statistical intelligence to this problem, we can observe that in certain election prediction markets such as the Iowa Electronic Markets, reliable forecasts have been generated over long spans of time and conditions, with results superior to individual experts or polls. Such markets, which may be operated publicly or as an internal market, are just one of several promising frontiers in predictive futures research.

Such improvements in the predictability of individual events do not though, from a complexity theory viewpoint, address the unpredictability inherent in dealing with entire systems, which emerge from the interaction between multiple individual events.

Methodologies

Futures practitioners use a wide range of models and methods (theory and practice), many of which come from other academic disciplines, including economics, sociology, geography, history, engineering, mathematics, psychology, technology, tourism, physics, biology, astronomy, and aspects of theology (specifically, the range of future beliefs).

One of the fundamental assumptions in futures studies is that the future is plural not singular, that is, that it consists of alternative futures of varying likelihood but that it is impossible in principle to say with certainty which one will occur. The primary effort in futures studies, therefore, is to identify and describe alternative futures. This effort includes collecting quantitative and qualitative data about the possibility, probability, and desirability of change. The plurality of the term "futures" in futures studies denotes the rich variety of alternative futures, including the subset of preferable futures (normative futures), that can be studied.

Practitioners of the discipline previously concentrated on extrapolating present technological, economic or social trends, or on attempting to predict future trends, but more recently they have started to examine social systems and uncertainties and to build scenarios, question the worldviews behind such scenarios via the causal layered analysis method (and others), create preferred visions of the future, and use backcasting to derive alternative implementation strategies. Apart from extrapolation and scenarios, many dozens of methods and techniques are used in futures research (see below).

Futures studies also includes normative or preferred futures, but a major contribution involves connecting both extrapolated (exploratory) and normative research to help individuals and organisations to build better social futures amid a (presumed) landscape of shifting social changes. Practitioners use varying proportions of inspiration and research. Futures studies only rarely uses the scientific method in the sense of controlled, repeatable and falsifiable experiments with highly standardized methodologies, given that environmental conditions for repeating a predictive scheme are usually quite hard to control. However, many futurists are informed by scientific techniques. Some historians project patterns observed in past civilizations upon present-day society to anticipate what will happen in the future. Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West" argued, for instance, that western society, like imperial Rome, had reached a stage of cultural maturity that would inexorably lead to decline, in measurable ways.

Futures studies is often summarized as being concerned with "three Ps and a W", or possible, probable, and preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are low probability but high impact events (positive or negative), should they occur. Many futurists, however, do not use the wild card approach. Rather, they use a methodology called Emerging Issues Analysis. It searches for the seeds of change, issues that are likely to move from unknown to the known, from low impact to high impact.

Estimates of probability are involved with two of the four central concerns of foresight professionals (discerning and classifying both probable and wildcard events), while considering the range of possible futures, recognizing the plurality of existing alternative futures, characterizing and attempting to resolve normative disagreements on the future, and envisioning and creating preferred futures are other major areas of scholarship. Most estimates of probability in futures studies are normative and qualitative, though significant progress on statistical and quantitative methods (technology and information growth curves, cliometrics, predictive psychology, prediction markets, etc.) has been made in recent decades.

Futures techniques

While forecasting – i.e., attempts to predict future states from current trends – is a common methodology, professional scenarios often rely on "backcasting": asking what changes in the present would be required to arrive at envisioned alternative future states. For example, the Policy Reform and Eco-Communalism scenarios developed by the Global Scenario Group rely on the backcasting method. Practitioners of futures studies classify themselves as futurists (or foresight practitioners).
Futurists use a diverse range of forecasting methods including:

• Anticipatory thinking protocols:
• Causal layered analysis (CLA)
• Environmental scanning
• Scenario method
• Delphi method
• Future history
• Monitoring
• Backcasting (eco-history)
• Cross-impact analysis
• Futures workshops
• Failure mode and effects analysis
• Futures wheel
• Technology roadmapping
• Social network analysis
• Systems engineering
• Trend analysis
• Morphological analysis
• Technology forecasting

Shaping alternative futures

Futurists use scenarios – alternative possible futures – as an important tool. To some extent, people can determine what they consider probable or desirable using qualitative and quantitative methods. By looking at a variety of possibilities one comes closer to shaping the future, rather than merely predicting it. Shaping alternative futures starts by establishing a number of scenarios. Setting up scenarios takes place as a process with many stages. One of those stages involves the study of trends. A trend persists long-term and long-range; it affects many societal groups, grows slowly and appears to have a profound basis. In contrast, a fad operates in the short term, shows the vagaries of fashion, affects particular societal groups, and spreads quickly but superficially.

Sample predicted futures range from predicted ecological catastrophes, through a utopian future where the poorest human being lives in what present-day observers would regard as wealth and comfort, through the transformation of humanity into a posthuman life-form, to the destruction of all life on Earth in, say, a nanotechnological disaster.

Futurists have a decidedly mixed reputation and a patchy track record at successful prediction. For reasons of convenience, they often extrapolate present technical and societal trends and assume they will develop at the same rate into the future; but technical progress and social upheavals, in reality, take place in fits and starts and in different areas at different rates.

Many 1950s futurists predicted commonplace space tourism by the year 2000, but ignored the possibilities of ubiquitous, cheap computers, while Marxist expectations have failed to materialise to date. On the other hand, many forecasts have portrayed the future with some degree of accuracy. Current futurists often present multiple scenarios that help their audience envision what "may" occur instead of merely "predicting the future". They claim that understanding potential scenarios helps individuals and organizations prepare with flexibility.

Many corporations use futurists as part of their risk management strategy, for horizon scanning and emerging issues analysis, and to identify wild cards – low probability, potentially high-impact risks.^[27] Every successful and unsuccessful business engages in futuring to some degree – for example in research and development, innovation and market research, anticipating competitor behavior and so on.^[28][29]

Weak signals, the future sign and wild cards

In futures research "weak signals" may be understood as advanced, noisy and socially situated indicators of change in trends and systems that constitute raw informational material for enabling anticipatory action. There is some confusion about the definition of weak signal by various researchers and consultants. Sometimes it is referred as future oriented information, sometimes more like emerging issues. The confusion has been partly clarified with the concept 'the future sign', by separating signal, issue and interpretation of the future sign.^[30]

"Wild cards" refer to low-probability and high-impact events, such as existential risks. This concept may be embedded in standard foresight projects and introduced into anticipatory decision-making activity in order to increase the ability of social groups adapt to surprises arising in turbulent business environments. Such sudden and unique incidents might constitute turning points in the evolution of a certain trend or system. Wild cards may or may not be announced by weak signals, which are incomplete and fragmented data from which relevant foresight information might be inferred. Sometimes, mistakenly, wild cards and weak signals are considered as synonyms, which they are not.^[31]

Near-term predictions

A long-running tradition in various cultures, and especially in the media, involves various spokespersons making predictions for the upcoming year at the beginning of the year. These predictions sometimes base themselves on current trends in culture (music, movies, fashion, politics); sometimes they make hopeful guesses as to what major events might take place over the course of the next year.

Some of these predictions come true as the year unfolds, though many fail. When predicted events fail to take place, the authors of the predictions often state that misinterpretation of the "signs" and portents may explain the failure of the prediction.

Marketers have increasingly started to embrace futures studies, in an effort to benefit from an increasingly competitive marketplace with fast production cycles, using such techniques as trendspotting as popularized by Faith Popcorn.^{[dubious – discuss]}

Trend analysis and forecasting

Mega-trends

Trends come in different sizes. A mega-trend extends over many generations, and in cases of climate, mega-trends can cover periods prior to human existence. They describe complex interactions between many factors. The increase in population from the palaeolithic period to the present provides an example.

Potential trends

Possible new trends grow from innovations, projects, beliefs or actions that have the potential to grow and eventually go mainstream in the future. For example, just a few years ago, alternative medicine remained an outcast from modern medicine. Now it has links with big business and has achieved a degree of respectability in some circles and even in the marketplace. This increasing level of acceptance illustrates a potential trend of society to move away from the sciences, even beyond the scope of medicine.

Branching trends

Very often, trends relate to one another the same way as a tree-trunk relates to branches and twigs. For example, a well-documented movement toward equality between men and women might represent a branch trend. The trend toward reducing differences in the salaries of men and women in the Western world could form a twig on that branch.

Life-cycle of a trend

When a potential trend gets enough confirmation in the various media, surveys or questionnaires to show that it has an increasingly accepted value, behavior or technology, it becomes accepted as a bona fide trend. Trends can also gain confirmation by the existence of other trends perceived as springing from the same branch. Some commentators claim that when 15% to 25% of a given population integrates an innovation, project, belief or action into their daily life then a trend becomes mainstream.

Education

Education in the field of futures studies has taken place for some time. Beginning in the United States of America in the 1960s, it has since developed in many different countries. Futures education can encourage the use of concepts, tools and processes that allow students to think long-term, consequentially, and imaginatively. It generally helps students to:

1. conceptualise more just and sustainable human and planetary futures.
2. develop knowledge and skills in exploring probable and preferred futures.
3. understand the dynamics and influence that human, social and ecological systems have on alternative futures.
4. conscientize responsibility and action on the part of students toward creating better futures.

Thorough documentation of the history of futures education exists, for example in the work of Richard A. Slaughter (2004),^[32] David Hicks, Ivana Milojević^[33] and Jennifer Gidley^[34][35][36] to name a few.

While futures studies remains a relatively new academic tradition, numerous tertiary institutions around the world teach it. These vary from small programs, or universities with just one or two classes, to programs that incorporate futures studies into other degrees, (for example in planning, business, environmental studies, economics, development studies, science and technology studies). Various formal Masters-level programs exist on six continents. Finally, doctoral dissertations around the world have incorporated futures studies. A recent survey documented approximately 50 cases of futures studies at the tertiary level.^[37]

The largest Futures Studies program in the world is at Tamkang University, Taiwan.^{[citation needed]} Futures Studies is a required course at the undergraduate level, with between three to five thousand students taking classes on an annual basis. Housed in the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies is an MA Program. Only ten students are accepted annually in the program. Associated with the program is the Journal of Futures Studies.^[38]

The longest running Future Studies program in North America was established in 1975 at The University of Houston-Clear Lake.^[39] It moved to the University of Houston main campus in 2007 and renamed the degree to Foresight. The program was established on the belief that if history is studied and taught in an academic setting, then so should the future.

As of 2003, over 40 tertiary education establishments around the world were delivering one or more courses in futures studies. The World Futures Studies Federation^[40] has a comprehensive survey of global futures programs and courses. The Acceleration Studies Foundation maintains an annotated list of primary and secondary graduate futures studies programs.^[41]

Organizations such as Teach The Future also aim to promote future studies in the secondary school curriculum in order to develop structured approaches to thinking about the future in public school students. The rationale is that a sophisticated approach to thinking about, anticipating, and planning for the future is a core skill requirement that every student should have, similar to literacy and math skills.

Futurists

Several authors have become recognized as futurists. They research trends, particularly in technology, and write their observations, conclusions, and predictions. In earlier eras, many futurists were at academic institutions. John McHale, author of The Future of the Future, published a 'Futures Directory', and directed a think tank called The Centre For Integrative Studies at a university. Futurists have started consulting groups or earn money as speakers, with examples including Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt and Patrick Dixon. Frank Feather is a business speaker that presents himself as a pragmatic futurist. Some futurists have commonalities with science fiction, and some science-fiction writers, such as Arthur C. Clarke, are known as futurists.^{[citation needed]} In the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin distinguished futurists from novelists, writing of the study as the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurists. In her words, "a novelist's business is lying".
A survey of 108 futurists^[42] found the following shared assumptions:

1. We are in the midst of a historical transformation. Current times are not just part of normal history.
2. Multiple perspectives are at heart of futures studies, including unconventional thinking, internal critique, and cross-cultural comparison.
3. Consideration of alternatives. Futurists do not see themselves as value-free forecasters, but instead aware of multiple possibilities.
4. Participatory futures. Futurists generally see their role as liberating the future in each person, and creating enhanced public ownership of the future. This is true worldwide.^{[clarification needed]}
5. Long term policy transformation. While some are more policy-oriented than others, almost all believe that the work of futures studies is to shape public policy, so it consciously and explicitly takes into account the long term.
6. Part of the process of creating alternative futures and of influencing public (corporate, or international) policy is internal transformation. At international meetings, structural and individual factors are considered equally important.
7. Complexity. Futurists believe that a simple one-dimensional or single-discipline orientation is not satisfactory. Trans-disciplinary approaches that take complexity seriously are necessary. Systems thinking, particularly in its evolutionary dimension, is also crucial.
8. Futurists are motivated by change. They are not content merely to describe or forecast. They desire an active role in world transformation.
9. They are hopeful for a better future as a "strange attractor".
10. Most believe they are pragmatists in this world, even as they imagine and work for another. Futurists have a long term perspective.
11. Sustainable futures, understood as making decisions that do not reduce future options, that include policies on nature, gender and other accepted paradigms. This applies to corporate futurists and the NGO. Environmental sustainability is reconciled with the technological, spiritual and post-structural ideals. Sustainability is not a "back to nature" ideal, but rather inclusive of technology and culture.

Applications of foresight and specific fields

General applicability and use of foresight products

Several corporations and government agencies utilize foresight products to both better understand potential risks and prepare for potential opportunities. Several government agencies publish material for internal stakeholders as well as make that material available to broader public. Examples of this include the US Congressional Budget Office long term budget projections,^[43] the National Intelligence Center,^[44] and the United Kingdom Government Office for Science.^[45] Much of this material is used by policy makers to inform policy decisions and government agencies to develop long term plan. Several corporations, particularly those with long product development lifecycles, utilize foresight and future studies products and practitioners in the development of their business strategies. The Shell Corporation is one such entity.^[46] Foresight professionals and their tools are increasingly being utilized in both the private and public areas to help leaders deal with an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

Fashion and design

Fashion is one area of trend forecasting. The industry typically works 18 months ahead of the current selling season.^{[citation needed]} Large retailers look at the obvious impact of everything from the weather forecast to runway fashion for consumer tastes. Consumer behavior and statistics are also important for a long-range forecast.

Artists and conceptual designers, by contrast, may feel that consumer trends are a barrier to creativity. Many of these ‘startists’ start micro trends but do not follow trends themselves.^{[citation needed]}

Design is another area of trend forecasting. Foresight and futures thinking are rapidly being adopted by the design industry to insure more sustainable, robust and humanistic products. Design, much like future studies is an interdisciplinary field that considers global trends, challenges and opportunities to foster innovation. Designers are thus adopting futures methodologies including scenarios, trend forecasting, and futures research.

Holistic thinking that incorporates strategic, innovative and anticipatory solutions gives designers the tools necessary to navigate complex problems and develop novel future enhancing and visionary solutions.

The Association for Professional Futurists has also held meetings discussing the ways in which Design Thinking and Futures Thinking intersect.

Energy and alternative sources

While the price of oil probably will go down and up, the basic price trajectory is sharply up. Market forces will play an important role, but there are not enough new sources of oil in the Earth to make up for escalating demands from China, India, and the Middle East, and to replace declining fields. And while many alternative sources of energy exist in principle, none exists in fact in quality or quantity sufficient to make up for the shortfall of oil soon enough. A growing gap looms between the effective end of the Age of Oil and the possible emergence of new energy sources.^[47]

Education

As Foresight has expanded to include a broader range of social concerns all levels and types of education have been addressed, including formal and informal education. Many countries are beginning to implement Foresight in their Education policy. A few programs are listed below:

• Finland's FinnSight 2015^[48] - Implementation began in 2006 and though at the time was not referred to as "Foresight" they tend to display the characteristics of a foresight program.
• Singapore's Ministry of Education Master plan for Information Technology in Education^[49] - This third Masterplan continues what was built on in the 1st and 2nd plans to transform learning environments to equip students to compete in a knowledge economy.

Science Fiction

Wendell Bell and Ed Cornish acknowledge science fiction as a catalyst to future studies, conjuring up visions of tomorrow.^[50] Science fiction’s potential to provide an “imaginative social vision” is its contribution to futures studies and public perspective. Productive sci-fi presents plausible, normative scenarios.^[50] Jim Dator attributes the foundational concepts of “images of the future” to Wendell Bell, for clarifying Fred Polak’s concept in Images of the Future, as it applies to futures studies.^[51][52] Similar to futures studies’ scenarios thinking, empirically supported visions of the future are a window into what the future could be. Pamela Sargent states, “Science fiction reflects attitudes typical of this century.” She gives a brief history of impactful sci-fi publications, like The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov and Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein.^[53] Alternate perspectives validate sci-fi as part of the fuzzy “images of the future.”^[52] However, the challenge is the lack of consistent futures research based literature frameworks.^[53] Ian Miles reviews The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction,” identifying ways Science Fiction and Futures Studies “cross-fertilize, as well as the ways in which they differ distinctly.” Science Fiction cannot be simply considered fictionalized Futures Studies. It may have aims other than “prediction, and be no more concerned with shaping the future than any other genre of literature.” ^[54] It is not to be understood as an explicit pillar of futures studies, due to its inconsistency of integrated futures research. Additionally, Dennis Livingston, a literature and Futures journal critic says, “The depiction of truly alternative societies has not been one of science fiction’s strong points, especially” preferred, normative envisages.^[55]

Research centers

• Graduate Degree in Foresight, University of Houston^[56]
• Institute for Futures Research, University of Stellenbosch
• Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies
• The Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC)
• The Foresight Programme, London, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
• The Futures Academy, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland
• Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
• Institute for Futures Research, South Africa
• Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, California
• National Intelligence Council, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Washington DC
• Singularity Institute, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
• Tellus Institute, Boston MA
• World Future Society
• World Futures Studies Federation, world
• Future of Humanity Institute
• Italian Institute for the Future, Naples, Italy^[57]

Futurists and foresight thought leaders

• Daniel Bell
• Peter C. Bishop
• Nick Bostrom
• Jamais Cascio
• Arthur C. Clarke^[58]
• Jim Dator
• Leonardo da Vinci (Flight)
• Nicolas De Santis
• Peter Diamandis
• Mahdi Elmandjra
• Jacque Fresco^[59]
• George Friedman
• Hugo de Garis
• Jennifer M. Gidley
• Ben Goertzel
• Arthur Harkins
• Stephen Hawking^[60][61]
• Aldous Huxley ("Brave New World")
• Sohail Inayatullah
• Mitchell Joachim
• Bill Joy
• Robert Jungk
• Herman Kahn
• Michio Kaku
• Ray Kurzweil
• Max More
• George Orwell ("Nineteen Eighty-Four")
• David Passig
• Kim Stanley Robinson
• Michel Saloff Coste
• Anders Sandberg
• Peter Schwartz
• John Smart
• Mark Stevenson ("An Optimist's Tour of the Future")
• Alvin Toffler ("Future Shock")
• Jules Verne ("From the Earth to the Moon")
• Natasha Vita-More
• H. G. Wells (World Brain)
• Eliezer Yudkowsky

Books

Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century (Michio Kaku) Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel (Michio Kaku) Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (Michio Kaku) The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind (Michio Kaku) The Age of Intelligent Machines (Ray Kurzweil) The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (Ray Kurzweil) The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Ray Kurzweil) Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think (Peter Diamandis) Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (George Friedman) Future Shock (Alvin Toffler)

The Third Wave (Alvin Toffler) Futurewise: Six Faces of Global Change (Patrick Dixon) The Limits to Growth (Donella Meadows) Our Final Hour (Martin Rees) The Revenge of Gaia (James Lovelock) The Skeptical Environmentalist (Bjørn Lomborg) Creating Better Futures: Scenario Planning As A Tool For A Better Tomorrow (James Ogilvy) Infinite Progress: How the Internet and Technology Will End Ignorance, Disease, Poverty, Hunger, and War (Byron Reese) Paris in the Twentieth Century (Jules Verne) The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) Future Primitive and Other Essays (John Zerzan) An Anarchist FAQ (Iain McKay) Looking Forward (Jacque Fresco) The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change (Al Gore)

Periodicals and monographs

• International Journal of Forecasting
• Journal of Futures Studies
• Technological Forecasting and Social Change
• The Futurist World Future Society

Organizations

Acceleration Studies Foundation Applied Foresight Network Association of Professional Futurists Club of Rome Global Business Network Global Scenario Group Future of Humanity Institute Gold Mercury International Hudson Institute Long Now Foundation The Millennium Project

NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts Project 2049 Institute RAND Corporation Singularity University Shaping Tomorrow Strategic Foresight Group Teach The Future TechCast Project Tellus Institute The Arlington Institute The Venus Project World Future Society World Futures Studies Federation

Bumblebee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bombus
The buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hymenoptera
Family:	Apidae
Subfamily:	Apinae
Tribe:	Bombini
Genus:	Bombus Latreille, 1802
Diversity
> 250 species and subspecies
Distribution shown in red. Introductions to New Zealand, spread to Tasmania not shown

A bumblebee, also written bumble bee, is a member of the bee genus Bombus, in the family Apidae. The brood parasitic or cuckoo bumblebees have sometimes been classified as a subgenus or genus, Psithyrus, but are now usually treated as members of Bombus. This genus is the only extant group in the tribe Bombini, though a few extinct related genera (e.g., Calyptapis) are known from fossils. Over 250 species are known,^[1] found primarily in higher latitudes or at higher altitude in the Northern Hemisphere, although they also occur in South America; however, a few lowland tropical species are known. European bumblebees have been introduced to New Zealand and Tasmania.

Bumblebees are social insects which form colonies with a single queen. Colonies are smaller than those of honeybees, growing to as few as 50 individuals in a nest. Female bumblebees can sting repeatedly, but generally ignore humans and other animals. Cuckoo bumblebees do not make nests; their queens aggressively invade the nests of other bumblebee species, kill the resident queens and then lay their own eggs which are cared for by the resident workers.

Bumblebees have round bodies covered in soft hair (long, branched setae), called pile, making them appear and feel fuzzy. They have aposematic (warning) coloration, often consisting of contrasting bands of colour, and different species of bumblebee in a region often resemble each other in mutually protective Müllerian mimicry. Harmless insects such as hoverflies often derive protection from resembling bumblebees, in Batesian mimicry, and may be confused with them. Nest-making bumblebees can be distinguished from similarly large, fuzzy cuckoo bees by the form of the female hind leg. In nesting bumblebees, it is modified to form a pollen basket, a bare shiny area surrounded by a fringe of hairs used to transport pollen, whereas in cuckoo bees, the hind leg is hairy all round, and pollen grains are wedged among the hairs for transport.

Like their relatives the honeybees, bumblebees feed on nectar, using their long hairy tongues to lap up the liquid; the proboscis is folded under the head during flight. Bumblebees gather nectar to add to the stores in the nest, and pollen to feed their young. They forage using colour and spatial relationships to identify flowers to feed from. Some bumblebees rob nectar, making a hole near the base of a flower to access the nectar while avoiding pollen transfer. Bumblebees are important agricultural pollinators, so their decline in Europe, North America, and Asia is a cause for concern. The decline has been caused by habitat loss, the mechanisation of agriculture, and pesticides.

Etymology and common names

Beatrix Potter called Babbity Bumble a "bumble bee" in The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse, 1910.

The word "bumblebee" is a compound of "bumble" + "bee" — "bumble" meaning to hum, buzz, drone, or move ineptly or flounderingly.^[2] The generic name Bombus, assigned by Pierre André Latreille in 1802, is derived from the Latin word for a buzzing or humming sound.^[3]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term "bumblebee" was first recorded as having been used in the English language in the 1530 work Lesclarcissement by John Palsgrave, "I bomme, as a bombyll bee dothe."^[4] However the OED also states that the term "humblebee" predates it, having first been used in 1450 in Fysshynge wyth Angle, "In Juyll the greshop & the humbylbee in the medow."^[5] The latter term was used in A Midsummer Night's Dream (circa 1600) by William Shakespeare, "The honie-bags steale from the humble Bees."^[6] An old provincial name, "dumbledor", also denoted a buzzing insect such as a bumblebee or cockchafer, "dumble" probably imitating the sound of these insects, while "dor" meant "beetle".^[7] In On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin speculated about "humble-bees" and their interactions with other species:^[8]

I have [...] reason to believe that humble-bees are indispensable to the fertilisation of the heartsease (Viola tricolor), for other bees do not visit this flower. From experiments which I have tried, I have found that the visits of bees, if not indispensable, are at least highly beneficial to the fertilisation of our clovers; but humble-bees alone visit the common red clover (Trifolium pratense), as other bees cannot reach the nectar.

However, "bumblebee" remained in use, for example in The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910) by Beatrix Potter, "Suddenly round a corner, she met Babbitty Bumble--"Zizz, Bizz, Bizzz!" said the bumblebee." Since World War II "humblebee" has fallen into near-total disuse.^[9]

Phylogeny

The stingless bees or Meliponini are a sister group to the Bombini.

The bumblebee tribe Bombini is one of four groups of corbiculate bees (those with pollen baskets) in the Apidae, the others being the Apini (honeybees), Euglossini (orchid bees), and Meliponini (stingless bees). The corbiculate bees are a monophyletic group. Advanced eusocial behaviour appears to have evolved twice in the group, giving rise to controversy, now largely settled, as to the phylogenetic origins of the four tribes; it had been supposed that eusocial behaviour had evolved only once, requiring the Apini to be close to the Meliponini, which they do not resemble. It is now thought that the Apini (with advanced societies) and Euglossini are closely related, while the primitively eusocial Bombini are close to the Meliponini, which have somewhat more advanced eusocial behaviour. Sophie Cardinal and Bryan Danforth comment that "While remarkable, a hypothesis of dual origins of advanced eusociality is congruent with early studies on corbiculate morphology and social behavior."^[10] Their analysis, combining molecular, morphological and behavioural data, gives the following cladogram:^[10]

Corbiculate bees	Apini (honeybees) Euglossini (orchid bees) Bombini (bumblebees) Meliponini (stingless bees)

On this hypothesis, the molecular data suggest that the Bombini are 25 to 40 million years old, while the Meliponini (and thus the clade that includes the Bombini and Meliponini) are 81 to 96 million years old, about the same age as the corbiculate group.^[10]

The fossil record for bees is very incomplete, but by 2012 some 11 specimens that might possibly be Bombini, some poorly documented, had been described; some (such as Calyptapis florissantensis from Florissant, USA, and Oligoapis beskonakensis from Beskonak, Turkey) dated from the Oligocene.^[11] In 2012 a fossil bumblebee, Bombus (Bombus) randeckensis was found in the Miocene rocks of the Randeck Maar in southwestern Germany and confidently placed in the subgenus Bombus.^[11] In 2014, a new bumblebee, Bombus cerdanyensis, was described from Late Miocene lacustrine beds of La Cerdanya, Spain,^[12] while another, Oligobombus cuspidatus was described from the late Eocene Bembridge Marls of the Isle of Wight.^[13][14]

Taxonomy

The genus Bombus, the only one extant in the tribe Bombini, comprises over 250 species; for an overview of the differences between bumblebees and other bees and wasps, see characteristics of common wasps and bees. The genus has been divided variously into up to 49 subgenera, a degree of complexity criticised by Williams (2008).^[15] The cuckoo bumblebees Psithyrus have sometimes been treated as a separate genus but are now considered to be part of Bombus, in one or more subgenera.^[15] Williams identifies 15 subgenera that are seen to be monophyletic, fewer in number, diagnosable from morphology, and at least roughly correspond to behavioural and ecological groupings:^[15]

Subgenera of the genus Bombus	Mendacibombus, 12 species Bombias, 3 species Kallobombus, 1 species Orientalibombus, 3 species Subterraneobombus, 10 species Megabombus, 22 species Thoracobombus, 50 species Psithyrus, 30 species Pyrobombus, 50 species Alpinobombus, 5 species Bombus (subgenus), 5 species Alpigenobombus, 7 species Melanobombus, 17 species Sibirocobombus, 7 species Cullumanobombus, 23 species

General description

Bumblebees are varied in appearance, but are generally plump and densely furry. Compared to honeybees they are larger and stouter-bodied. Many species have broad bands of colour, the patterns helping to distinguish different species. Whereas honeybees have short tongues and therefore mainly pollinate open flowers, some bumblebee species have long tongues and collect nectar from flowers that are closed into a tube.^[16] Compared to a honeybee, a bumblebee has a broader body and a more rounded tip to the abdomen. Bumblebees have fewer stripes (or none), and usually have part of the body covered in black fur, while honeybees have many stripes including several grey stripes on the abdomen.^[17] Sizes are very variable even within species; the largest British species, B. terrestris, has queens up to 22 mm long, males up to 16 mm long, and workers between 11 and 17 mm long.^[18] The largest bumblebee species in the world is B. dahlbomii of Chile, up to about 40 mm long, and described as "flying mice" and "a monstrous fluffy ginger beast".^[19]

Distribution and habitat

Bumblebees are typically found in temperate climates, and are often found at higher latitudes and altitudes than other bees, although a few lowland tropical species exist.^[20] A few species (B. polais and B. alpinus) range into very cold climates where other bees might not be found; B. polaris occurs in northern Ellesmere Island in the high Arctic, along with another bumblebee B. hyperboreus which parasitises its nest. This is the most northernmost occurrence of any eusocial insect.^[21] One reason for their presence in cold places is that bumblebees can regulate their body temperature, via solar radiation, internal mechanisms of "shivering" and radiative cooling from the abdomen (called heterothermy). Other bees have similar physiology, but the mechanisms seem best developed and have been most studied in bumblebees.^[22] They adapt to higher elevations by extending their wing stroke amplitude.^[23] Bumblebees have a largely cosmopolitan distribution but are absent from Australia (apart from Tasmania where they have been introduced) and are found in Africa only north of the Sahara.^[24]

Biology

A common carder bumblebee Bombus pascuorum extending its tongue towards a Heuchera inflorescence

Feeding

The bumblebee tongue (the proboscis) is a long, hairy structure that extends from a sheath-like modified maxilla. The primary action of the tongue is lapping, i.e. repeated dipping of the tongue into liquid.^[25] The tip of the tongue probably acts as a suction cup and during lapping, nectar may be drawn up the proboscis by capillary action. When at rest or flying, the proboscis is kept folded under the head. The longer the tongue, the deeper the bumblebee can probe into a flower and bees probably learn by experience which flower source is best-suited to their tongue length.^[26]

Wax production

The exoskeleton of the abdomen is divided into plates called dorsal tergites and ventral sternites. Wax is secreted from glands on the abdomen and extruded between the sternites where it resembles flakes of dandruff. It is secreted by the queen when she starts a nest and by young workers. It is scraped from the abdomen by the legs, moulded until maleable and used in the construction of honeypots, to cover the eggs, to line empty cocoons for use as storage containers and sometimes to cover the exterior of the nest.^[27]

Coloration

Cuckoo bumblebees, like this Bombus barbutellus, have similar aposematic (warning) coloration to nest-making bumblebees, and may also mimic their host species.

The brightly coloured pile of the bumblebee is an aposematic (warning) signal, given that females can inflict a painful sting. Depending on the species and morph, the warning colours range from entirely black, to bright yellow, red, orange, white, and pink.^[28] Dipteran flies in the families Syrphidae (hoverflies), Asilidae (robber flies), Tabanidae (horseflies), Oestridae (bot or warble flies) and Bombyliidae (bee flies) all include Batesian mimics of bumblebees, resembling them closely enough to deceive at least some predators.^[29]

Many species of Bombus, including the group sometimes called Psithyrus (cuckoo bumblebees), have evolved Müllerian mimicry, where the different bumblebees in a region resemble each other, so that a young predator need only learn to avoid any of them once. For example, in California a group of bumblebees consists of largely black species including B. californicus, B. caliginosus, B. vandykei, B. vosnesenskii, B. insularis and B. fernaldae. Other bees in California include a group of species all banded black and yellow. In each case, Müllerian mimicry provides the bees in the group with a selective advantage.^[29] In addition, parasitic (cuckoo) bumblebees resemble their hosts more closely than would be expected by chance, at least in areas like Europe where parasite-host co-speciation is common; but this too may be explained as Müllerian mimicry, rather than requiring the parasite's coloration to deceive the host (aggressive mimicry).^[30]

Temperature control

Bumblebees are active in conditions when honeybees stay at home, and can readily absorb heat from even weak sunshine.^[31] The thick pile created by long setae (bristles) acts as insulation to keep bumblebees warm in cold weather; species from cold climates have longer setae (and thus thicker insulation) than those from the tropics.^[32] The temperature of the flight muscles, which occupy much of the thorax, needs to be at least 30 °C (86 °F) before flight can take place. The muscle temperature can be raised by shivering. It takes about five minutes for the muscles to reach this temperature at an air temperature of 13 °C (55 °F).^[33]

Communication

Bumblebees do not have ears, and it is not known whether or how well they can hear. However, they are sensitive to the vibrations made by sound travelling through wood or other materials.^[27]

Bumblebees do not exhibit the "bee dances" used by honeybees to tell other workers the locations of food sources. Instead, when they return from a successful foraging expedition, they run excitedly around in the nest for several minutes before going out to forage once more. These bees may be offering some form of communication based on the buzzing sounds made by their wings, which may stimulate other bees to start foraging.^[34] Another stimulant to foraging activity is the level of food reserves in the colony. Bees monitor the amount of honey in the honeypots, and when little is left or when high quality food is added, they are more likely to go out to forage.^[35]

Reproduction and nesting

Nest of red-tailed bumblebee. Bombus lapidarius, showing wax pots full of honey

Bumblebees form colonies of between roughly 50 and 400 individuals; these are small compared to honeybee hives which hold about 50,000 bees. Many species nest underground, choosing old rodent burrows or sheltered places, and avoiding places that receive direct sunlight which could result in overheating. Other species make nests above ground, whether in thick grass or in holes in trees. A bumblebee nest is not organised into hexagonal combs like that of a honeybee; the cells are instead clustered together untidily. The workers remove dead bees or larvae from the nest and deposit them outside the nest entrance, helping to prevent disease. Nests in temperate regions last only for a single season and do not survive the winter.^[36]

In the early spring, the queen comes out of diapause and finds a suitable place to create her colony. Then she builds wax cells in which to lay her eggs which were fertilised the previous year. The eggs that hatch develop into female workers, and in time, the queen populates the colony, with workers feeding the young and performing other duties similar to honeybee workers. In temperate zones, young queens (gynes) leave the nest in the autumn and mate, often more than once, with males (drones) which are forcibly driven out of the colony.^[37] The drones and workers die as the weather turns colder; the young queens feed intensively to build up stores of fat for the winter. They survive in a resting state (diapause), generally below ground, until the weather warms up in the spring.^[37][38]

Bumblebee life-cycle showing adults and larvae in nest of B. terrestris. Engraved by William Home Lizars after drawing probably by James Hope Stewart.^[39]

In fertilised queens, the ovaries only become active when the queen starts to lay. An egg passes along the oviduct to the vagina where there is a chamber called the spermatheca, in which the sperm from the mating is stored. Depending on need, she may allow her egg to be fertilised. Unfertilised eggs become haploid males; fertilised eggs grow into diploid females and queens.^[40] The hormones that stimulate the development of the ovaries are suppressed in female worker bees, while the queen remains dominant.^[37]

To develop, the larvae must be fed both nectar for carbohydrates and pollen for protein. Bumblebees feed nectar to the larvae by chewing a small hole in the brood cell into which they regurgitate nectar. Larvae are fed pollen in one of two ways, depending on the bumblebee species. Pocket-making bumblebees create pockets of pollen at the base of the brood-cell clump from which the larvae feed themselves. Pollen-storing bumblebees keep pollen in separate wax pots and feed it to the larvae.^[41]

An above-ground nest, hidden in grass and moss, of the common carder bee, Bombus pascuorum. The wax canopy or involucrum has been removed to show winged workers and pupae in irregularly placed wax cells.

After the emergence of the first or second group of offspring, workers take over the task of foraging and the queen spends most of her time laying eggs and caring for larvae. The colony grows progressively larger and eventually begins to produce males and new queens.^[37] Unlike the workers of more advanced social insects such as honeybees, bumblebee workers are fertile, and can lay unfertilised haploid eggs (with only a single set of chromosomes) that develop into viable male bumblebees. Only fertilised queens can lay diploid eggs (one set of chromosomes from a drone, one from the queen) that mature into workers and new queens.^[42]

In a young colony, the queen minimises reproductive competition from workers by suppressing their egg-laying through physical aggression and pheromones.^[43] Worker policing leads to nearly all eggs laid by workers being eaten.^[44] Thus, the queen is usually the mother of all of the first males laid. Workers eventually begin to lay male eggs later in the season when the queen's ability to suppress their reproduction diminishes.^[45] Because of the reproductive competition between workers and the queen, bumblebees are considered "primitively eusocial".^[10][44]

Foraging behaviour

A bumblebee loaded with pollen in its pollen baskets

Bumblebees generally visit flowers that exhibit the bee pollination syndrome and these patches of flowers may be up to 1–2 km from their colony.^[46] They tend to visit the same patches of flowers every day, as long as they continue to find nectar and pollen there,^[47] a habit known as pollinator or flower constancy. While foraging, bumblebees can reach ground speeds of up to 15 metres per second (54 km/h).^[48]

Biting open the stem of a flower...

...and using its tongue to drink the nectar.

A bumblebee "nectar robbing" a flower

Bumblebees use a combination of colour and spatial relationships to learn from which flowers to forage.^[49] They can also detect both the presence and the pattern of electric fields on flowers, which occur due to atmospheric electricity, and take a while to leak away into the ground. They use this information to find out if a flower has been recently visited by another bee.^[50] After arriving at a flower, they extract nectar using their long tongues ("glossae") and store it in their crops. Many species of bumblebees also exhibit "nectar robbing": instead of inserting the mouthparts into the flower in the normal way, these bees bite directly through the base of the corolla to extract nectar, avoiding pollen transfer.^[51]

Pollen is removed from flowers deliberately or incidentally by bumblebees. Incidental removal occurs when bumblebees come in contact with the anthers of a flower while collecting nectar. When it enters a flower, the bumblebee's body hairs receive a dusting of pollen from the anthers. In queens and workers this is then groomed into the corbiculae (pollen baskets) on the hind legs where it can be seen as bulging masses that may contain as many as a million pollen grains. Male bumblebees do not have corbiculae and do not purposively collect pollen.^[52] Bumblebees are also capable of buzz pollination, in which they dislodge pollen from the anthers by creating a resonant vibration with their flight muscles.^[53]

In at least some species, once a bumblebee has visited a flower, it leaves a scent mark on it. This scent mark deters bumblebees from visiting that flower until the scent degrades.^[54] This scent mark is a general chemical bouquet that bumblebees leave behind in different locations (e.g. nest, neutral, and food sites),^[55] and they learn to use this bouquet to identify both rewarding and unrewarding flowers.^[56] Bumblebees rely on this chemical bouquet more when the flower has a high handling time (i.e. where it takes a longer time for the bee to find the nectar once inside the flower).^[57]

Once they have collected nectar and pollen, female workers return to the nest and deposit the harvest into brood cells, or into wax cells for storage. Unlike honeybees, bumblebees only store a few days' worth of food, so are much more vulnerable to food shortages.^[58] Male bumblebees collect only nectar and do so to feed themselves. They may visit quite different flowers from the workers because of their different nutritional needs.^[59]

Cuckoo bumblebees

The cuckoo bumblebee B. vestalis, a parasite of B. terrestris

Bumblebees of the subgenus Psithyrus (known as 'cuckoo bumblebees', and formerly considered a separate genus) are brood parasites,^[60] sometimes called kleptoparasites,^[61] in the colonies of other bumblebees, and have lost the ability to collect pollen. Before finding and invading a host colony, a Psithyrus female (there is no caste system in this subgenus) feeds directly from flowers. Once she has infiltrated a host colony, the Psithyrus female kills or subdues the queen of that colony, and uses pheromones and physical attacks to force the workers of that colony to feed her and her young.^[62] The cuckoo bumblebee can be described as a queen-intolerant inquiline, since the host queen is killed to enable the parasite to produce more offspring.^[60]

The female Psithyrus has a number of morphological adaptations for combat, such as larger mandibles, a tough cuticle and a larger venom sac that increase her chances of taking over a nest.^[63] Upon emerging from their cocoons, the Psithyrus males and females disperse and mate. The males do not survive the winter but, like nonparasitic bumblebee queens, Psithyrus females find suitable locations to spend the winter and enter diapause after mating. They usually emerge from hibernation later than their host species. Each species of cuckoo bee has a specific host species, which it may physically resemble.^[64] In the case of the parasitism of B. terrestris by B. (Psithyrus) vestalis, genetic analysis of individuals captured in the wild showed that about 42% of the host species' nests at a single location^[a] had "[lost] their fight against their parasite".^[60]

Sting

Queen and worker bumblebees can sting. Unlike in honeybees, a bumblebee's stinger lacks barbs, so the bee can sting repeatedly without injuring itself; by the same token, the stinger is not left in the wound.^[65][66] Bumblebee species are not normally aggressive, but may sting in defence of their nest, or if harmed. Female cuckoo bumblebees aggressively attack host colony members, and sting the host queen, but ignore other animals unless disturbed.^[67]

Predators, parasites and pathogens

Bumblebee nest dug up and destroyed by a predator, probably a badger

Bumblebees, despite their ability to sting, are eaten by certain predators. Nests may be dug up by badgers and eaten whole, including any adults present.^[68] Adults are preyed upon by robber flies and beewolves in North America.^[69] In Europe, birds including bee-eaters and shrikes capture adult bumblebees on the wing; smaller birds such as great tits also occasionally learn to take bumblebees, while camouflaged crab spiders catch them as they visit flowers.^[70]

Bumblebee stored as food by a great grey shrike

The great grey shrike is able to detect flying bumblebees up to 100 metres away; once captured, the sting is removed by repeatedly squeezing the insect with the mandibles and wiping the abdomen on a branch.^[71] The European honey buzzard follows flying bees back to their nest, digs out the nest with their feet, and eats larvae, pupae and adults as they find them.^[72]

Bumblebees are parasitised by tracheal mites, Locustacarus buchneri; protozoans including Crithidia bombi and Apicystis bombi; and microsporidians including Nosema bombi and Nosema ceranae. The tree bumblebee B. hypnorum has spread into the United Kingdom despite hosting high levels of a nematode that normally interferes with queen bees' attempts to establish colonies.^[73] Deformed wing virus has been found to affect 11% of bumblebees in Great Britain.^[74]

Bumblebees and people

Bumblebees and human culture: Bombus anachoreta on a Russian postage stamp, 2005

Agricultural use

Bumblebees are important pollinators of both crops and wildflowers.^[75] Because bumblebees do not overwinter the entire colony, they do not stockpile honey, so are not useful as honey producers. Bumblebees are increasingly cultured for agricultural use as pollinators, among other reasons because they can pollinate plants such as tomato in greenhouses by buzz pollination whereas other pollinators cannot.^[76] Commercial production began in 1987, when Roland De Jonghe founded the Biobest company; in 1988 they produced enough nests to pollinate 40 hectares of tomatoes. The industry grew quickly, starting with other companies in the Netherlands. Bumblebee nests, mainly of buff-tailed bumblebees, are produced in at least 30 factories around the world; over a million nests are grown annually in Europe; Turkey is a major producer.^[77]
Bumblebees are Northern Hemisphere animals. When red clover was introduced as a crop to New Zealand in the nineteenth century, it was found to have no local pollinators, and clover seed had accordingly to be imported each year. Four species of bumblebee from the United Kingdom were therefore imported as pollinators. In 1885 and 1886 the Canterbury Acclimatization Society brought in 442 queens, of which 93 survived and quickly multiplied. As planned, red clover was soon being produced from locally-grown seed.^[31] Bumblebees are also reared commercially to pollinate tomatoes grown in greenhouses.^[40] The New Zealand population of buff-tailed bumblebees naturally colonised Tasmania, 1,500 miles away, in 1992.^[78]

Some concerns exist about the impact of the international trade in mass-produced bumblebee colonies. Evidence from Japan^[79] and South America^[80] indicates bumblebees can escape and naturalise in new environments, causing damage to native pollinators. In addition, mounting evidence indicates mass-produced bumblebees may also carry diseases, harmful to wild bumblebees^[81][82] and honeybees.^[82]

Population decline

Bumblebee species are declining in Europe, North America, and Asia due to a number of factors, including land-use change that reduces their food plants. In North America, pathogens are possibly having a stronger negative effect especially for the subgenus Bombus.^[83] A major impact on bumblebees was caused by the mechanisation of agriculture, accelerated by the urgent need to increase food production during the Second World War. Small farms depended on horses to pull implements and carts. The horses were fed on clover and hay, both of which were permanently grown on a typical farm. Little artificial fertiliser was used. Farms thus provided flowering clover and flower-rich meadows, favouring bumblebees. Mechanisation removed the need for horses and most of the clover; artificial fertilisers encouraged the growth of taller grasses, outcompeting the meadow flowers. Most of the flowers, and the bumblebees that fed on them, disappeared from Britain by the early 1980s. The last native British short-haired bumblebee was captured near Dungeness in 1988.^[84]

Bumblebees are in danger in many developed countries due to habitat destruction and collateral pesticide damage. The European Food Safety Authority ruled that three neonicotinoid pesticides (clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam) presented a high risk for bees.^[85] While most work on neonicotinoid toxicity has looked at honeybees, a study on B. terrestris showed that "field-realistic" levels of imidacloprid significantly reduced growth rate and cut production of new queens by 85%, implying a "considerable negative effect" on wild bumblebee populations throughout the developed world.^[86] Low levels of neonicotinoids can reduce the number of bumblebees in a colony by as much as 55%, and cause dysfunction in the bumblebees' brains. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust considers this evidence of reduced brain function "particularly alarming given that bumblebees rely upon their intelligence to go about their daily tasks."^[87]

Of 19 species of native nestmaking bumblebees and six species of cuckoo bumblebees formerly widespread in Britain,^[88] three have been extirpated,^[89][90] eight are in serious decline, and only six remain widespread.^[91] Similar declines have been reported in Ireland, with four species designated endangered, and another two considered vulnerable to extinction.^[92] A decline in bumblebee numbers could cause large-scale changes to the countryside, resulting from inadequate pollination of certain plants.^[93]

Some bumblebees native to North America are also vanishing, such as Bombus terricola, Bombus affinis, and Bombus occidentalis, and one, Bombus franklini, may be extinct.^[94] In South America, Bombus bellicosus was extirpated in the Northern Limit of its distribution range, probably due to intense land use and climate change effects.^[95]

Conservation efforts

Drone short-haired bumblebee, Bombus subterraneus. The species was successfully reintroduced to England from Sweden.

In 2006 the bumblebee researcher Dave Goulson founded a registered charity, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, to prevent the extinction "of any of the UK's bumblebees."^[96][97] In 2009 and 2010, the Trust attempted to reintroduce the short-haired bumblebee, Bombus subterraneus, which had become extinct in Britain, from the British-derived populations surviving in New Zealand from their introduction there a century earlier.^[98] From 2011 the Trust, in partnership with Natural England, Hymettus and the RSPB, has reintroduced short-haired bumblebee queens from Skåne in southern Sweden to restored flower-rich meadows at Dungeness in Kent. The queens were checked for mites and American foulbrood disease. Agri-environment schemes spread across the neighbouring area of Romney Marsh have been set up to provide over 800 hectares of additional flower-rich habitat for the bees. By the summer of 2013, workers of the species were found near the release zone, proving that nests had been established. The restored habitat has produced a revival in at least five "Schedule 41 priority" species: the ruderal bumblebee, Bombus ruderatus; the red-shanked carder bee, Bombus ruderarius; the shrill carder bee, Bombus sylvarum; the brown-banded carder bee, Bombus humilis and the moss carder bee, Bombus muscorum.^[99]

The world's first bumblebee sanctuary was established at Vane Farm in the Loch Leven National Nature Reserve in Scotland in 2008.^[93]

In 2011, London's Natural History Museum led the establishment of an International Union for the Conservation of Nature Bumblebee Specialist Group, chaired by Dr. Paul H. Williams,^[100] to assess the threat status of bumblebee species worldwide using Red List criteria.^[101]

Misconception about flight

A widely believed falsehood holds that scientists proved bumblebees to be incapable of flight.^[102]

According to 20th-century folklore, the laws of aerodynamics prove the bumblebee should be incapable of flight, as it does not have the capacity (in terms of wing size or beats per second) to achieve flight with the degree of wing loading necessary.^[103]

Supposedly someone did a back of the envelope calculation, taking the weight of a bumblebee and its wing area into account, and worked out that if it only flies at a couple of metres per seconds, the wings wouldn’t produce enough lift to hold the bee up,’ explains Charlie Ellington, Professor of Animal Mechanics at Cambridge University.^[103]

The origin of this claim has been difficult to pin down with any certainty. John H. McMasters recounted an anecdote about an unnamed Swiss aerodynamicist at a dinner party who performed some rough calculations and concluded, presumably in jest, that according to the equations, bumblebees cannot fly.^[104] In later years, McMasters has backed away from this origin, suggesting there could be multiple sources, and the earliest he has found was a reference in the 1934 book Le Vol des Insectes by French entomologist Antoine Magnan (1881–1938); they had applied the equations of air resistance to insects and found their flight was impossible, but "One shouldn't be surprised that the results of the calculations don't square with reality".^[105]

The following passage appears in the introduction to Le Vol des Insectes:^[106]

Tout d'abord poussé par ce qui se fait en aviation, j'ai appliqué aux insectes les lois de la résistance de l'air, et je suis arrivé avec M. Sainte-Laguë à cette conclusion que leur vol est impossible.

This translates to:

First prompted by what is done in aviation, I applied the laws of air resistance to insects, and I arrived, with Mr. Sainte-Laguë, at this conclusion that their flight is impossible.

Magnan refers to his assistant André Sainte-Laguë.^[107] Some credit physicist Ludwig Prandtl (1875–1953) of the University of Göttingen in Germany with popularizing the idea. Others say Swiss gas dynamicist Jacob Ackeret (1898–1981) did the calculations.^[108]

Bumblebee in flight. It has its tongue extended and a laden pollen basket.

The calculations that purported to show that bumblebees cannot fly are based upon a simplified linear treatment of oscillating aerofoils. The method assumes small amplitude oscillations without flow separation. This ignores the effect of dynamic stall (an airflow separation inducing a large vortex above the wing) which briefly produces several times the lift of the aerofoil in regular flight. More sophisticated aerodynamic analysis shows the bumblebee can fly because its wings encounter dynamic stall in every oscillation cycle.^[109]

Additionally, John Maynard Smith, a noted biologist with a strong background in aeronautics, has pointed out that bumblebees would not be expected to sustain flight, as they would need to generate too much power given their tiny wing area. However, in aerodynamics experiments with other insects, he found that viscosity at the scale of small insects meant even their small wings can move a very large volume of air relative to their size, and this reduces the power required to sustain flight by an order of magnitude.^[110]

Bees beat their wings about 200 times a second. Their thorax muscles do not contract on each nerve firing, but rather vibrate like a plucked rubber band. This is efficient, since it lets the system consisting of muscle and wing operate at its resonant frequency, leading to low energy consumption. Further, it is necessary, since nerves cannot fire 200 times per second. These types of muscles are called asynchronous muscles^[111] and are often found in insect wings. Bumblebees must warm up their bodies considerably to get airborne at low ambient temperatures.
Bumblebees have been known to reach an internal thoracic temperature of 30 °C (86 °F) using this method.^[22][112]

In music and literature

	Flight of the Bumblebee Menu 0:00 Flight of the Bumblebee performed by the US Army Band
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The Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the Flight of the Bumblebee, c. 1900

The orchestral interlude Flight of the Bumblebee was composed (c. 1900) by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It represents the turning of Prince Guidon into a bumblebee so he can fly away to visit his father, Tsar Saltan, in the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan,^[113] although the music may reflect the flight of a bluebottle rather than a bumblebee.^[114] The music inspired Walt Disney to feature a bumblebee in his 1940 animated musical Fantasia and have it sound as if it were flying in all parts of the theater. This early attempt at "surround sound" was unsuccessful, and the music was excluded from the film's release.^[115]

In 1599, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, someone, possibly Tailboys Dymoke, published Caltha Poetarum: Or The Bumble Bee, under the pseudonym "T. Cutwode".^[116] This was one of nine books censored under the Bishop's Ban issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift and the Bishop of London Richard Bancroft.^[117]

Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about a bumblebee. Daguerreotype, c. 1848

Emily Dickinson made a bumblebee the subject of her parody of Isaac Watts's well-known poem about honeybees, How Doth the Little Busy Bee (1715). Where Watts wrote "How skilfully she builds her cell! How neat she spreads the wax!",^[118] Dickinson's poem, "The Bumble-Bee's Religion" (1881) begins "His little Hearse-like Figure / Unto itself a Dirge / To a delusive Lilac / The vanity divulge / Of Industry and Morals / And every righteous thing / For the divine Perdition / of Idleness and Spring." The letter was said to have enclosed a dead bee.^[119][120]

The entomologist Otto Plath wrote Bumblebees and Their Ways in 1934.^[121] His daughter, the poet Sylvia Plath, wrote a group of poems about bees late in 1962, within four months of her suicide,^[122] transforming her father's interest into her poetry.^[123]

Bumblebees of different species illustrated by Moses Harris in his 1782 Exposition of English Insects

The scientist and illustrator Moses Harris (1731–1785) painted accurate watercolour drawings of bumblebees in his An Exposition of English Insects Including the Several Classes of Neuroptera, Hymenoptera, & Diptera, or Bees, Flies, & Libellulae (1776–80).^[124]

Bumblebees appear as characters, often eponymously, in children's books. The surname Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series (1997–2007) is an old name for bumblebee.^[7] J. K. Rowling said the name "seemed to suit the headmaster, because one of his passions is music and I imagined him walking around humming to himself".^[125] Among the many books for younger children are Bumble the Bee by Yvon Douran and Tony Neal (2014); Bertie Bumble Bee by K. I. Al-Ghani (2012); Ben the Bumble Bee: How do bees make honey? by Romessa Awadalla (2015); Bumble Bee Bob Has a Big Butt by Papa Campbell (2012); Buzz, Buzz, Buzz! Went Bumble-bee by Colin West (1997); Bumble Bee by Margaret Wise Brown (2000); How the Bumble Came to Bee by Paul and Ella Quarry (2012); The Adventures of Professor Bumble and the Bumble Bees by Stephen Brailovsky (2010). Among Beatrix Potter's "little books", Babbity Bumble and other members of her nest appear in The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910).