Abstract
The causes of declines in bees and other pollinators remains an on-going debate. While recent attention has focussed upon pesticides, other environmental pollutants have largely been ignored. Aluminium is the most significant environmental contaminant of recent times and we speculated that it could be a factor in pollinator decline. Herein we have measured the content of aluminium in bumblebee pupae taken from naturally foraging colonies in the UK. Individual pupae were acid-digested in a microwave oven and their aluminium content determined using transversely heated graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry. Pupae were heavily contaminated with aluminium giving values between 13.4 and 193.4 μg/g dry wt. and a mean (SD) value of 51.0 (33.0) μg/g dry wt. for the 72 pupae tested. Mean aluminium content was shown to be a significant negative predictor of average pupal weight in colonies. While no other statistically significant relationships were found relating aluminium to bee or colony health, the actual content of aluminium in pupae are extremely high and demonstrate significant exposure to aluminium. Bees rely heavily on cognitive function and aluminium is a known neurotoxin with links, for example, to Alzheimer’s disease in humans. The significant contamination of bumblebee pupae by aluminium raises the intriguing spectre of cognitive dysfunction playing a role in their population decline.
Highlights
There is on-going debate as to the causes and extent of declines of bees and other pollinators, with a growing consensus that pollinators are subject to a number of interacting stressors, including exposure to pesticides, infection with native and emerging pathogens, and declining abundance and diversity of floral resources [1,2,3]
The aluminium content of pupae varied significantly from colony to colony with the range of the colony means (SD) being from 16.3 (2.6) for Colony 3 to 149.4 (44.7) μg/g dry wt. for Colony 1 (ANOVA, F19,52 = 13.5, p
This result was due to a single colony, Colony 1, which was located in an urban garden in Uckfield (Table 2) and had an unusually high detected-level of aluminium for this dataset
Summary
There is on-going debate as to the causes and extent of declines of bees and other pollinators, with a growing consensus that pollinators are subject to a number of interacting stressors, including exposure to pesticides, infection with native and emerging pathogens, and declining abundance and diversity of floral resources [1,2,3]. Aside from pesticides, little attention has been paid to quantifying exposure to or impacts of other pollutants [4]. The most significant environmental contaminant of recent times is the metal aluminium [5]. Human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels resulting in ‘acid rain’, intensive agriculture producing acid sulphate soils and the mining of aluminium ores to make aluminium metal and salts have all contributed to the burgeoning biological availability of this non-essential metal [6]. Trees, arable crops and humans are all impacted by aluminium and recent.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
