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Insects
Special Issues
The Impacts of Pesticides on Pollinators
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The Impacts of Pesticides on Pollinators

A special issue of Insects (ISSN 2075-4450).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 8324

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Ramesh Sagili

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Horticulture, Oregon State University, Agricultural & Life Sciences 4017, 2750 SW Campus Way, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
Interests: honey bee nutrition; honey bee health; honey bee pollination
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Priyadarshini Chakrabarti

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Horticulture, Oregon State University, Agricultural & Life Sciences 4017, 2750 SW Campus Way, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
Interests: honey bee nutrition; health; physiology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Barbara Smith

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry, UK
Interests: agroecology; farmland ecology; pollination ecology; ecosystem service provision; impact of agricultural intensification

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The impacts of pesticides on pollinators is a crucial global concern. Both acute and chronic exposure to pesticides may lead to long-term sublethal impacts on individual pollinators, as well as overall colony losses in managed bees. It is thus important to understand the physiological, behavioral, and molecular underpinnings to such exposures. Research from across the globe is needed on both managed and native bees, and it is crucial that we aim to understand the following: (1) the impacts of pesticides on pollinator health and functional biology; (2) the impacts on the biodiversity of pollinators in an agricultural landscape; and (3) the impacts of pesticides on pollinator behavioral alterations. In this Special Issue, we look forward to publishing original research articles pertaining to the above three research foci.

Dr. Ramesh Sagili
Dr. Priyadarshini Charabarti
Dr. Barbara Smith
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Insects is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • pesticides
  • bees
  • pollinators
  • physiology
  • molecular ecology
  • ecotoxicology
  • colony losses
  • agricultural landscapes
  • honey bees
  • native bees

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 1451 KiB  
Article
Environmental Display Can Buffer the Effect of Pesticides on Solitary Bees
by Samuel Boff, Josué Raizer and Daniela Lupi
Insects 2020, 11(7), 417; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects11070417 - 05 Jul 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2764
Abstract
Environmental quality (e.g., diversity of resource availability, nesting sites, environmental display) plays an important role in an animal’s life. While homogeneous environments can restrict organisms from developing activities such as food seeking (behavioral impairment), more complex environments allow animals to perform activities with [...] Read more.
Environmental quality (e.g., diversity of resource availability, nesting sites, environmental display) plays an important role in an animal’s life. While homogeneous environments can restrict organisms from developing activities such as food seeking (behavioral impairment), more complex environments allow animals to perform activities with learning and behavioral perfecting outcomes. Pesticides are known to affect the learning and foraging behaviors of bees; however, little is known about the counterbalance displayed by the environment. Herein, we conducted two experiments that simulated distinct environmental displays, in which the effects of a fungicide (IndarTM 5EW-febunconazole) on solitary bee foraging activities were tested. We found that the fungicide only impaired the activities of bees in one of the studied environments. The difference in visitation rates and flower exploitation of bees between the two different environmental displays led to changes in metrics of bee–flower networks across environments. Linkage density, a metric associated with pollination efficiency that is known to be impacted by different environments, differed across environments. Our results showed that ecological interaction network metrics can differ regarding the different environmental displays. This study indicates that environmental complexity helps balance the negative effects of pesticides on solitary bees and highlights the potential use of solitary bees as model organisms for experimental simulations of environmental change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impacts of Pesticides on Pollinators)
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Graphical abstract

17 pages, 515 KiB  
Article
Equivocal Evidence for Colony Level Stress Effects on Bumble Bee Pollination Services
by Arran Greenop, Nevine Mica-Hawkyard, Sarah Walkington, Andrew Wilby, Samantha M Cook, Richard F Pywell and Ben A Woodcock
Insects 2020, 11(3), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects11030191 - 18 Mar 2020
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4745
Abstract
Climate change poses a threat to global food security with extreme heat events causing drought and direct damage to crop plants. However, by altering behavioural or physiological responses of insects, extreme heat events may also affect pollination services on which many crops are [...] Read more.
Climate change poses a threat to global food security with extreme heat events causing drought and direct damage to crop plants. However, by altering behavioural or physiological responses of insects, extreme heat events may also affect pollination services on which many crops are dependent. Such effects may potentially be exacerbated by other environmental stresses, such as exposure to widely used agro-chemicals. To determine whether environmental stressors interact to affect pollination services, we carried out field cage experiments on the buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris). Using a Bayesian approach, we assessed whether heat stress (colonies maintained at an ambient temperature of 25 °C or 31 °C) and insecticide exposure (5 ng g-1 of the neonicotinoid insecticide clothianidin) could induce behavioural changes that affected pollination of faba bean (Vicia faba). Only the bumble bee colonies and not the plants were exposed to the environmental stress treatments. Bean plants exposed to heat-stressed bumble bee colonies (31 °C) had a lower proportional pod set compared to colonies maintained at 25 °C. There was also weak evidence that heat stressed colonies caused lower total bean weight. Bee exposure to clothianidin was found to have no clear effect on plant yields, either individually or as part of an interaction. We identified no effect of either colony stressor on bumble bee foraging behaviours. Our results suggest that extreme heat stress at the colony level may impact on pollination services. However, as the effect for other key yield parameters was weaker (e.g. bean yields), our results are not conclusive. Overall, our study highlights the need for further research on how environmental stress affects behavioural interactions in plant-pollinator systems that could impact on crop yields. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impacts of Pesticides on Pollinators)
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