Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate pesticide used around the world to protect food crops against insects and mites. Despite guidelines for chlorpyrifos usage, including precautions to protect beneficial insects, such as honeybees from spray drift, this pesticide has been detected in bees in various countries, indicating that exposure still occurs. Here, we examined chlorpyrifos levels in bees collected from 17 locations in Otago, New Zealand, and compared doses of this pesticide that cause sub-lethal effects on learning performance under laboratory conditions with amounts of chlorpyrifos detected in the bees in the field. The pesticide was detected at 17 % of the sites sampled and in 12 % of the colonies examined. Amounts detected ranged from 35 to 286 pg.bee(-1), far below the LD50 of ~100 ng.bee(-1). We detected no adverse effect of chlorpyrifos on aversive learning, but the formation and retrieval of appetitive olfactory memories was severely affected. Chlorpyrifos fed to bees in amounts several orders of magnitude lower than the LD50, and also lower than levels detected in bees, was found to slow appetitive learning and reduce the specificity of memory recall. As learning and memory play a central role in the behavioral ecology and communication of foraging bees, chlorpyrifos, even in sublethal doses, may threaten the success and survival of this important insect pollinator.

Recent studies revealed that reef corals can eat large-sized pelagic and benthic animals in addition to small planktonic prey. As follow-up, we document natural ingestion of sea slugs by corals and investigate the role of sacoglossan sea slugs as possible prey items of scleractinian corals. Feeding trials were carried out using six sacoglossan species as prey, two each from the genera Costasiella , Elysia and Plakobranchus , and four free-living solitary corals ( Danafungia scruposa , Fungia fungites , Pleuractis paumotensis and Heteropsammia cochlea ) as predators. Trials were carried out under both in-situ and ex-situ conditions with the aim to observe ingestion and assess signs of prey consumption based on tissue loss of prey individuals over time. Significant differences were observed in both ingestion time and consumption state of prey between prey species, with three of them being ingested more rapidly and preferentially consumed over the others. Additionally, prey size was found to be a significant factor with larger prey (>12 mm) being ingested more slowly and rarely than smaller ones (<6 mm and 6–12 mm). Comparisons of consumption capability among predators showed no significant difference with all coral species showing similar preferences for prey species. While no specific mechanism of prey capture is proposed, we also document instances of kleptoparisitism and resuspension of prey items by wrasses. This study highlights the important distinction between opportunistic prey capture and true predation events.

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Improved access to field survey infrastructure throughout South-East Asia has allowed for a greater intensity of biodiversity surveys than ever before. The rocky bottoms and coral reef habitats across the region have been shown to support some of the highest sea slug biodiversity on the planet, with ever increasing records. During the past ten years, intensive SCUBA surveys have been carried out at Koh Tao, in the Gulf of Thailand, which have yielded remarkable findings in sea slug biology and ecology. In this work a brief history of sea slug biodiversity research from Thailand is covered and a complete inventory of sea slugs from Koh Tao, Gulf of Thailand is provided. This inventory is based on surveys from 2012 to 2020, with previously unreported findings since 2016. Habitat specificity and species-specific ecology are reported where available with a focused comparison of coral reef habitats and deeper soft-sediment habitats. The findings contribute 90 new species records for Thai waters (92 for the Gulf of Thailand) and report a remarkable consistency in the proportional diversity found to be exclusive to one habitat type or another. Additionally, taxonomic remarks are provided for species documented from Koh Tao that have not been discussed in past literature from Thailand, and a summary of previous records in the Indo-West Pacific is given.

Insect diet refers to the food usually eaten by an insect for growth, tissue maintenance, and reproduction, as well as the energy necessary to main-tain these functions.

Over the past decades, research on insect cognition has made considerable advances in describing the ability of model species (in particular bees and fruit flies) to achieve cognitive tasks once thought to be unique to vertebrates, and investigating how these may be implemented in a miniature brain. While this lab-based research is critical to understand some fundamental mechanisms of insect brains and cognition, taking a more integrative and comparative view will help us making sense of this rich behavioural repertoire and its evolution. Here we argue that there is a need to reconsider insect cognition into an ecological context, in order to design experiments that address the cognitive challenges insects face in nature, identify competing hypotheses about the cognitive abilities driving the observed behavioural responses, and test them across different populations and species. Reconnecting with the tradition of naturalistic observations, by testing animals in the field or in ecologically-inspired setup and comparing the performances of individuals, is complementary to mechanistic research in the lab, and will greatly improve our understanding of the role of insect cognition, its the diversity, and the influence of ecological factors in its evolution.

Environmental pollutants can exert sublethal deleterious effects on animals. These include disruption of cognitive functions underlying crucial behaviours. While agrochemicals have been identified as a major threat to pollinators, metal pollutants, which are often found in complex mixtures, have so far been overlooked. Here we assessed the impact of acute exposure to field-realistic concentrations of three common metal pollutants, lead, copper, arsenic, and their combinations, on honey bee appetitive learning and memory. All treatments involving single metals slowed down learning and disrupted memory retrieval at 24 h. Combinations of these metals had additive negative effects on both processes, suggesting common pathways of toxicity. Our results highlight the need to further assess the risks of metal pollution on invertebrates.