Abstract
Adopting an Integrated Pest and Pollinator Management strategy requires an evaluation of pesticide risk for pollinator species. For non-Apid species, however, the standardized ingestion assays are difficult to implement. This hinders the consideration of non-Apid species in farm management strategies and government regulatory processes. We describe a new method for a mason bee, Osmia cornifrons, which is an important pollinator of apples and other fruit crops. Our approach overcomes high control mortality seen in other bioassay protocols and expands testing to include males as well as females. The new pesticide toxicity assessment protocol showed that (1) a group feeding method is optimum even though there is no trophallaxis, (2) males had better tolerance to pesticides although they are smaller, and (3) pesticides can cause additional mortality after the standard 48 h assessment time specified by European Food Safety Authority and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Highlights
The global decline of pollinator populations has led to the need to develop an Integrated Pest and Pollinator Management (IPPM) framework that balances optimal pest control while ensuring pollinator health in agroecosystems[1]
The Japanese orchard bee, Osmia cornifrons Radoszkowski (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae), is a solitary mason bee that is managed as an alternative pollinator for the tree fruit industry[13,14,15]
Several experiments were conducted based on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) guidance document on pollinator risk assessment of pesticides
Summary
The global decline of pollinator populations has led to the need to develop an Integrated Pest and Pollinator Management (IPPM) framework that balances optimal pest control while ensuring pollinator health in agroecosystems[1]. Standardized test methodologies for assessing pesticide toxicity through contact and ingestion have been developed for these social species, but these methods cannot be utilized on non-social bees because of differences in behavior and rearing requirements[4,10,11]. The need for more robust protocols for pesticide risk assessment of pollinators has led to a high demand for the development of bioassays on solitary bee species[1,12]. Based on the summary presentation of the International Commission of Plant-Pollinator Relationships (ICP-PR) non-Apis workshop 2017 (Valencia, Spain), the mortality rate in control treatment groups exceeded 20%28. Another potential problem is the time of mortality assessment. Males in Osmia species, tend to be more severely affected than larger bees when exposed to the same amount of a toxic substance[34]
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