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Bumblebee colony development following chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam under laboratory conditions

Neonicotinoid pesticides are used in agriculture to reduce damage from crop pests. However, beneficial insects such as bees can come into contact with these pesticides when foraging in treated areas, with potential consequences for bee declines and pollination service delivery. Honeybees are typical...

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Autores principales: Stanley, Dara A., Raine, Nigel E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556064/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28808317
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-08752-x
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author Stanley, Dara A.
Raine, Nigel E.
author_facet Stanley, Dara A.
Raine, Nigel E.
author_sort Stanley, Dara A.
collection PubMed
description Neonicotinoid pesticides are used in agriculture to reduce damage from crop pests. However, beneficial insects such as bees can come into contact with these pesticides when foraging in treated areas, with potential consequences for bee declines and pollination service delivery. Honeybees are typically used as a model organism to investigate insecticide impacts on bees, but relatively little is known about impacts on other taxa such as bumblebees. In this experiment, we chronically exposed whole mature bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colonies to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam (2.4ppb & 10ppb) over four weeks, and compared colony growth under laboratory conditions. We found no impact of insecticide exposure on colony weight gain, or the number or mass of sexuals produced, although colonies exposed to 2.4ppb produced larger males. As previous studies have reported pesticide effects on bumblebee colony growth, this may suggest that impacts on bumblebee colonies are more pronounced for colonies at an earlier stage in the reproductive cycle. Alternatively, it may also indicate that thiamethoxam differs in toxicity compared to previously tested neonicotinoids in terms of reproductive effects. In either case, assessing bumblebee colony development under field conditions is likely more informative for real world scenarios than tests conducted in laboratory conditions.
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spelling pubmed-55560642017-08-16 Bumblebee colony development following chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam under laboratory conditions Stanley, Dara A. Raine, Nigel E. Sci Rep Article Neonicotinoid pesticides are used in agriculture to reduce damage from crop pests. However, beneficial insects such as bees can come into contact with these pesticides when foraging in treated areas, with potential consequences for bee declines and pollination service delivery. Honeybees are typically used as a model organism to investigate insecticide impacts on bees, but relatively little is known about impacts on other taxa such as bumblebees. In this experiment, we chronically exposed whole mature bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colonies to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam (2.4ppb & 10ppb) over four weeks, and compared colony growth under laboratory conditions. We found no impact of insecticide exposure on colony weight gain, or the number or mass of sexuals produced, although colonies exposed to 2.4ppb produced larger males. As previous studies have reported pesticide effects on bumblebee colony growth, this may suggest that impacts on bumblebee colonies are more pronounced for colonies at an earlier stage in the reproductive cycle. Alternatively, it may also indicate that thiamethoxam differs in toxicity compared to previously tested neonicotinoids in terms of reproductive effects. In either case, assessing bumblebee colony development under field conditions is likely more informative for real world scenarios than tests conducted in laboratory conditions. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-08-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5556064/ /pubmed/28808317 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-08752-x Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Stanley, Dara A.
Raine, Nigel E.
Bumblebee colony development following chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam under laboratory conditions
title Bumblebee colony development following chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam under laboratory conditions
title_full Bumblebee colony development following chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam under laboratory conditions
title_fullStr Bumblebee colony development following chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam under laboratory conditions
title_full_unstemmed Bumblebee colony development following chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam under laboratory conditions
title_short Bumblebee colony development following chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam under laboratory conditions
title_sort bumblebee colony development following chronic exposure to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam under laboratory conditions
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556064/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28808317
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-08752-x
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