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... Now, a new paper reveals how they do it. Included in the bumblebee survival toolkit is the remarkable ability to extract oxygen from the water around them " literally allowing them to breathe underwater temporarily.

It's a skill set that can help the heart of a colony weather a crisis such as a flooded burrow, allowing her to survive and rebuild when conditions are more stable. And its discovery suggests that some species may have hidden reserves of resilience against environmental extremes.

"Our findings," writes a team led by evolutionary physiologist Charles Darveau of the University of Ottawa in Canada, "reveal a remarkable flooding-tolerance strategy and provide a foundation for exploring the limits, mechanisms, and ecological significance of underwater survival in terrestrial insects." ...