BackgroundIntensively cultivated agricultural landscapes often suffer from substantial pollinator losses, which may be leading to decreasing pollination services for crops and wild flowering plants. Conservation measures that are easy to implement and accepted by farmers are needed to halt a further loss of pollinators in large areas under intensive agricultural management. Here we report the results of a replicated long-term study involving networks of mostly perennial flower strips covering 10% of a conventionally managed agricultural landscape in southwestern Germany.ResultsWe demonstrate the considerable success of these measures for wild bee and butterfly species richness over an observation period of 5 years. Overall species richness of bees and butterflies but also the numbers of specialist bee species clearly increased in the ecological enhancement areas as compared to the control areas without ecological enhancement measures. A three to five-fold increase in species richness was found after more than 2 years of enhancement of the areas with flower strips. Oligolectic bee species increased significantly only after the third year.ConclusionsIn our long-term field experiment we used a large variety of seed mixtures and temporal variation in seeding time, ensured continuity of the flower-strips by using perennial seed mixtures and distributed the measures over c. 10% of the landscape. This led to an increase in pollinator abundance, suggesting that these measures may be instrumental for the successful support of pollinators. These measures may ensure the availability of a network of diverse habitats and foraging resources for pollinators throughout the year, as well as nesting sites for many species. The measures are applied in-field and are suitable for application in areas under intensive agriculture. We propose that flower strip networks should be implemented much more in the upcoming CAP (common agricultural policy) reform in the European Union and promoted more by advisory services for farmers.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12898-018-0210-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
The option of an evaluation and assessment of possible sublethal effects of pesticides on bees has been a subject of discussion by scientists and regulatory authorities. Effects considered included learning behaviour and orientation capacity. This discussion was enhanced by the French bee issue and allegations against systemic insecticides that were linked to the hypothesis that sublethal intoxication might even have led to reported colony losses. This paper considers whether and, if so, how sublethal effects should be incorporated into risk assessment, by addressing a number of questions: What is meant by a sublethal effect? Which sublethal effects should be measured, when and how? How are sublethal effects to be included in risk assessments? The authors conclude that sublethal studies may be helpful as an optional test to address particular, compound-specific concerns, as a lower-tier alternative to semi-field or field testing, if the effects are shown to be ecologically relevant. However, available higher-tier data (semi-field, field tests) should make any additional sublethal testing unnecessary, and higher-tier data should always override data of lower-tier trials on sublethal effects.
Effluents from municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are known to be point sources of micropollutants for surface waters. The aim of this study was to examine a reconstructed full-scale ozonation equipped with a pump-injector system for ozone (O) dosage and a fluidized moving-bed reactor as biological posttreatment at a municipal WWTP utilizing an effect-directed approach. This approach consists of chemical analysis in combination with toxicological tests for the assessment of treatment efficiency of the plant. Chemical analysis showed elimination rates > 80% for pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals. Analysis of endocrine disruptors was limited due to substance concentrations below the limit of detection (LOD). Estrogenic activity was detected by the Arxula Adeninivorans yeast estrogen screen (A-YES) at low concentrations (pg to ng EEQ/l range). Estrogenic activity was reduced by more than 90% after ozonation. In contrast, androgenic activity (measured in the Adeninivorans yeast androgen screen, A-YAS) was still found after O treatment and after biological posttreatment, which is consistent with the data obtained by chemical analysis. Furthermore, no marked genotoxic or cytotoxic effects were observed after ozonation using the alkaline comet and 3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazoliumbromid (MTT) assays, respectively. Results suggest that the applied specific O dose of 0.4 mg/mg is a safe operation setup in terms of toxicologically relevant transformation products. In addition, no adverse effects on primary producers, as evidenced by algae growth inhibition tests, were detected. The monitored biofilm growth in the biological posttreatment exhibited a steady state after one month. Based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and biomass, one might conclude that O did not apparently enter biological posttreatment to a great extent and that hydraulic retention time in the O reactor was sufficient. Our data demonstrate the effectiveness of a full-scale O treatment in combination with a fluidized moving-bed reactor as biological posttreatment for the reduction of a majority of micropollutants without the release of relevant toxic transformation products as assessed by a chemical and toxicity-based approach.
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