Farmers, policymakers and scientists around the world are preparing for the effects of manmade global climate change. In the tropics, they are trying to understand what will happen to populations of bees as temperatures rise and rainfall patterns change. Bees are necessary to pollinate many commercial crops. Without them, some crops could fail completely. In particular, coffee.

A new paper co-authored by a Smithsonian scientist and published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences may have up-ended expectations for the future of tropical bees and the coffee crop that depends on them…