Honeybees fail to discriminate floral scents in a complex learning task after consuming a neonicotinoid pesticide.

ABSTRACT: Neonicotinoids are pesticides used to protect crops but with known secondary influences at sublethal doses on bees. Honeybees use their sense of smell to identify the queen and nestmates, to signal danger and to distinguish flowers during foraging. Few behavioural studies to date have examined how neonicotinoid pesticides affect the ability of bees to distinguish odours. Here, we used a differential learning task to test how neonicotinoid exposure affects learning, memory and olfactory perception in foraging-age honeybees. Bees fed with thiamethoxam could not perform differential learning and could not distinguish odours during short- and long-term memory tests. Our data indicate that thiamethoxam directly impacts the cognitive processes involved in working memory required during different

SUBMITTER: Mustard JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7075050 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature