Abstract:Background
The effects of exposing Apis mellifera larvae to common insecticides were tested in the laboratory.
Results
The acute toxicity values of the four insecticides that we tested ranged from high toxicity to low toxicity: deltamethrin > cypermethrin > carbaryl > acetamiprid. The NOAEC (no observed adverse effect concentration) values of the chronic toxicity tests for each compound are 5 mg L−1 for acetamiprid, 2 mg L−1 for carbaryl, 1 mg L−1 for cypermethrin, and 0.2 mg L−1 for deltamethrin.
Conclusion
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“…The soundscape indices, which include signal variations as much as possible, may be necessary for their suitability to represent the beehive-inside complex sound scene. Several chemical pesticides (chlorpyrifos, cypermethrin, carbofuran, bifenthrin, clothianidin, and others) have previously been checked for harmful effects on the lives of honey bees (Yao et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2020;Dai et al, 2010). Therefore, we recommend that researchers should use soundscape features as a valuable tool for evaluating the health of colonies in future studies.…”
As the study of honey bee health has gained attention in the biology community, researchers have looked for new, non-invasive methods to monitor the health status of the colony. Since the beehive sound alters when the colony is exposed to stressors, analysis of the acoustic response of the colony has been used as a method to identify the type of stressor, whether it is chemical, pest, or disease. So far, two feature sets have been successfully used for this kind of analysis, being these low-level signal features and Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC). Here we propose using soundscape indices, developed initially to delineate acoustic diversity in ecosystems, as an alternative to now used features. In our study, we examine the beehive acoustic response to trichloromethane laced-air and blank air and compare the performance of all three feature sets to discern the colony's sound between the hive being exposed to the chemical and not. Our results show that sound indices overperform the alternative features sets on this task. Based on these findings, we consider sound indices to be a valid set of features for beehive sound analysis and present our results to call the attention of the community on this fact.
“…The soundscape indices, which include signal variations as much as possible, may be necessary for their suitability to represent the beehive-inside complex sound scene. Several chemical pesticides (chlorpyrifos, cypermethrin, carbofuran, bifenthrin, clothianidin, and others) have previously been checked for harmful effects on the lives of honey bees (Yao et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2020;Dai et al, 2010). Therefore, we recommend that researchers should use soundscape features as a valuable tool for evaluating the health of colonies in future studies.…”
As the study of honey bee health has gained attention in the biology community, researchers have looked for new, non-invasive methods to monitor the health status of the colony. Since the beehive sound alters when the colony is exposed to stressors, analysis of the acoustic response of the colony has been used as a method to identify the type of stressor, whether it is chemical, pest, or disease. So far, two feature sets have been successfully used for this kind of analysis, being these low-level signal features and Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC). Here we propose using soundscape indices, developed initially to delineate acoustic diversity in ecosystems, as an alternative to now used features. In our study, we examine the beehive acoustic response to trichloromethane laced-air and blank air and compare the performance of all three feature sets to discern the colony's sound between the hive being exposed to the chemical and not. Our results show that sound indices overperform the alternative features sets on this task. Based on these findings, we consider sound indices to be a valid set of features for beehive sound analysis and present our results to call the attention of the community on this fact.
“…Gutiérrez et al 2017;Shaw et al 2019;Vander Pan et al 2019), sublethal concentrations of deltamethrin can entail major physiological damages in a multitude of target and non-target insects (Cutler, 2013;Müller, 2018). For instance, exposure to sublethal doses of deltamethrin reduces females' fecundity in honeybees, parasitoid wasps and cockroaches (Dai et al, 2010;Lee et al, 1998;Teder and Knapp, 2019), impairs larval development in honeybees and the wasp Trichogramma achaeae (Oliveira et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2020) and inhibits molting processes in the stable fly Stomoxys calcitrans (Reissert-Oppermann et al, 2019).…”
The application of pesticides typically leads to lethal and sublethal exposure of non-target insects. Whereas our current understanding of these sublethal effects typically focuses on reproductive and physiological parameters, recent works emphasize that sublethal effects on behaviors such as maternal care could be of major importance in non-target species. However, it remained unknown whether these sublethal effects occur in insects. Here, we tested if exposure to sublethal doses of deltamethrin -a pyrethroid insecticide commonly used in crops -alters the expression of maternal egg care in females of the European earwig Forficula auricularia, a predator insect and pest control. Our results first reveal that deltamethrin exposure impaired the expression of three forms of maternal egg care: It decreased the likelihood of mothers to gather their otherwise scattered clutch of eggs, increased the time during which the female abandoned the clutch after a predator attack and reduced egg grooming duration. These sublethal effects did not reflect a lower activity of deltamethrin-exposed females, as these females increased their expression of self-grooming, and deltamethrin exposure did not affect females' exploration and mobility. Finally, we found that the negative effects of deltamethrin on egg care did not modify egg development, hatching rate and juvenile weight, possibly due to the transient effects of deltamethrin on maternal behaviors. Overall, our results reveal that sublethal exposure to a pesticide may diminish maternal egg care in a natural pest control and call for the integration of this measurement in assays on pesticides application.
“…Many studies have emphasized the importance of rearing honey-bee larvae in vitro for testing the toxicity of pesticides and, sequentially, experimental rearing methods have been systematically developed [ 12 , 18 , 32 , 44 ]. Natural or commercial hives consist of several honeybee combs with vertical structures for brood rearing and storing honey-bee products [ 45 ].…”
Rearing honey bee larvae in vitro is an ideal method to study honey bee larval diseases or the toxicity of pesticides on honey bee larvae under standardized conditions. However, recent studies reported that a horizontal position may cause the deformation of emerged bees. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the emergence and deformation rates of honey bee (Apis mellifera ligustica) larvae reared in horizontal and vertical positions. The study was conducted under the same laboratory conditions with three experimental groups, non-capped or capped horizontal plates and capped vertical plates. However, our results demonstrated that the exhibited adult deformation rates of the horizontal plates were significantly higher (27.8% and 26.1%) than those of the vertical plates (11.9%). In particular, the most common symptoms were deformed wings and an abnormal abdomen in the horizontal plates. Additionally, adults reared on horizontal plates were substantially smaller (10.88 and 10.82 mm) than those on vertical plates (11.55 mm). Considering these conclusions, we suggest that a vertical rearing method is more suitable when considering the deformation rates of the control groups to verify the sublethal effects of pesticides on honey bees.
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