Inferring pesticide toxicity to honey bees from a field-based feeding study using a colony model and Bayesian inference.

ABSTRACT: Honey bees are crucial pollinators for agricultural crops but are threatened by a multitude of stressors including exposure to pesticides. Linking our understanding of how pesticides affect individual bees to colony-level responses is challenging because colonies show emergent properties based on complex internal processes and interactions among individual bees. Agent-based models that simulate honey bee colony dynamics may be a tool for scaling between individual and colony effects of a pesticide. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are developing the VarroaPop + Pesticide model, which simulates the dynamics of honey bee colonies and how they respond to multiple stressors, including weather, Varroa mites, and pesticides. To evaluate t

SUBMITTER: Minucci JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8928141 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature