Equivocal Evidence for Colony Level Stress Effects on Bumble Bee Pollination Services.

ABSTRACT: Climate change poses a threat to global food security with extreme heat events causing drought and direct damage to crop plants. However, by altering behavioural or physiological responses of insects, extreme heat events may also affect pollination services on which many crops are dependent. Such effects may potentially be exacerbated by other environmental stresses, such as exposure to widely used agro-chemicals. To determine whether environmental stressors interact to affect pollination services, we carried out field cage experiments on the buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris). Using a Bayesian approach, we assessed whether heat stress (colonies maintained at an ambient temperature of 25 °C or 31 °C) and insecticide exposure (5 ng g^-1 of the neonicotinoid insectic

SUBMITTER: Greenop A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7142647 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature