Abstract
The objective of this work was to list potential candidate bee species for environmental risk assessment (ERA) of genetically modified (GM) cotton and to identify the most suited bee species for this task, according to their abundance and geographical distribution. Field inventories of bee on cotton flowers were performed in the states of Bahia and Mato Grosso, and in Distrito Federal, Brazil. During a 344 hour sampling, 3,470 bees from 74 species were recovered, at eight sites. Apis mellifera dominated the bee assemblages at all sites. Sampling at two sites that received no insecticide application was sufficient to identify the three most common and geographically widespread wild species: Paratrigona lineata, Melissoptila cnecomola, and Trigona spinipes, which could be useful indicators of pollination services in the ERA. Indirect ordination of common wild species revealed that insecticides reduced the number of native bee species and that interannual variation in bee assemblages may be low. Accumulation curves of rare bee species did not saturate, as expected in tropical and megadiverse regions. Species-based approaches are limited to analyze negative impacts of GM cotton on pollinator biological diversity. The accumulation rate of rare bee species, however, may be useful for evaluating possible negative effects of GM cotton on bee diversity.
Highlights
Introductionenvironmental risk assessment (ERA) typically has followed a model developed to assess the environmental effects of toxic chemicals (National Research Council, 1983; Andow & Hilbeck, 2004; Suter II, 2007), such as pesticides and mining waste, that focuses on direct toxic effects but does not adequately address indirect, cascading, or any of the higher order effects of considerable importance to ecosystem functioning (Forbes & Forbes, 1994; National Research Council, 2002; Stark et al, 2004; Andow & Zwahlen, 2006)
Impacts on pollination services can be evaluated using geographically widespread, common pollinator bee species, whereas impacts on pollinator biological diversity must focus on rare bee species
The species Apis mellifera dominates the bee assemblages in all sites
Summary
ERA typically has followed a model developed to assess the environmental effects of toxic chemicals (National Research Council, 1983; Andow & Hilbeck, 2004; Suter II, 2007), such as pesticides and mining waste, that focuses on direct toxic effects but does not adequately address indirect, cascading, or any of the higher order effects of considerable importance to ecosystem functioning (Forbes & Forbes, 1994; National Research Council, 2002; Stark et al, 2004; Andow & Zwahlen, 2006) This model evaluates surrogate species and extrapolates the results to all other species in the environment (Suter II, 2007). For example, ERA of GM crops has used the common honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) as the primary surrogate species, independently of the differences in the characteristics expressed by the transgene and in the other factors (National Research Council, 1983; Andow & Hilbeck, 2004)
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