Measurements of Chlorpyrifos Levels in Forager Bees and Comparison with Levels that Disrupt Honey Bee Odor-Mediated Learning Under Laboratory Conditions

Abstract

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.

Probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus Reduces Organophosphate Pesticide Absorption and Toxicity to Drosophila melanogaster

“…The potential off-target health consequences of organophosphate pesticide exposure for humans include neonatal developmental abnormalities (4,5), endocrine disruption (6), neurodegeneration, cancer (7,8), metabolic disruption (9), heart disease (10), chronic kidney disease, and other less common pathologies. In addition, organophosphate pesticides are reported to have negative impacts on honeybee colonies, which are critical pollinators for numerous agricultural products (11)(12)(13). Although the evidence is mixed and often correlative, the original use of these organophosphates as nerve agents strongly suggests that these pesticides are not aligned with human or wildlife health.…”

Vine and citrus mealybug pest control based on synthetic chemicals. A review

“…Besides its acute lethal effects, chlorpyrifos severely affected the formation and retrieval of appetitive memory in the honeybee, which could have an impact on the foraging behavior and honey production (Urlacher et al 2016). Eighty percent of dead honeybee samples collected periodically from four different locations during the citrus and stone fruit tree blooming season in the Valencian Community (Spain) had chlorpyrifos (Calatayud-Vernich et al 2016).…”

Reliability and factorial validity of a questionnaire to assess organophosphate pesticide exposure to agricultural workers in Maule, Chile

“…They are predominately used to control pests in agricultural settings. Human exposure to OPs can adversely affect human health (Liu et al 2014;Lerro et al 2015;Sánchez-Santed et al 2016;Urlacher et al 2016;Muñoz-Quezada et al 2016a). Acute intoxication results in headache and abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, dermatitis, skin lesions, sleep problems, salivation, blurry vision, leg cramps or muscular weakness (Azazh 2011;Jensen et al 2011;Suratman et al 2015), extrapyramidal symptoms (Reji et al 2016), kidney injury (Lee et al 2015), among others.…”