Are Neonicotinoid Pesticides Killing Bees?

This was a big week for bee news!  New research on bees and pesticides was published, and a major white paper from the Xerces Society on the same topic was released.

The pesticides in question are called Neonicotinoids, since they are derived from nicotine (used as a pesticide since the 1700′s). “Neonics” are systemic insecticides, or insecticides that are taken up by a plant’s tissues and circulate within the plant. This makes these pesticides a highly effective and relatively safe insect control method, since only insects that eat the plant will be affected. It also is sometimes the only way to kill insects inside a plant; an insect boring into a tree, for example, can’t be sprayed directly.

Neonicotinoid pesticides can also be applied as a root drench or a seed treatment, so there is no pesticide sprayed into the air, or landing where it should not go.  Farmers love neonicotinoids, since they not only reduce “off-target” effects, they last a really long time–usually one application can last for months, and sometimes over a year.  That saves a lot of money.

The problem is…because the insecticide circulates in plants’ tissue, it shows up in flower nectar and pollen. And that’s what bees collect and concentrate, and take back and feed to their young.  What initially seemed to be a very environmentally-friendly group of insecticides is turning out to be a risk for bees.

Carl Zimmer’s excellent New York Times summary of the research on bees and pesticides is a must read:  Bees’ decline linked to pesticides.

“In Thursday’s issue of the journal Science, two teams of researchers published studies suggesting that low levels of a common pesticide can have significant effects on bee colonies. One experiment, conducted by French researchers, indicates that the chemicals fog honeybee brains, making it harder for them to find their way home. The other study, by scientists in Britain, suggests that they keep bumblebees from supplying their hives with enough food to produce new queens….The authors of both studies contend that their results raise serious questions about the use of the pesticides, known as neonicotinoids.”

Carl (I shook his hand once, so I can call him Carl, right?) does a great job of showing how the scientific community is still resolving how all this research adds up.  In a post on his blog providing supplimental information to the NYTimes story above, Carl discusses the difficulty of making sense of all this information:

I found this story to be especially challenging to sum up in a single nut graph. To begin with, these experiments came after many years of previous experiments and surveys, which often provide conflicting pictures of what’s going on with insecticides and bees. The experiments themselves were not–could not–be perfect replicas of reality, and so I needed to talk to other scientists about how narrow that margin was. As they should, the scientists probed deep, pointing out flaws and ambiguity–in many cases even as they praised the research.
At the same time, these two papers did not appear in a vacuum. Other scientists have recently published studies (or have papers in review at other journals) that offer clues of their own to other factors that may be at work. And, biology being the godawful mess that it is, it seems that these factors work together, rather than in isolation.

If Carl Zimmer–an exceptional science journalist with access to the actual scientists that are doing the research–is having trouble trying to create a coherent picture of the information about these pesticides, I KNOW that the rest of us regular schmoes are struggling too.

Here is the important thing to remember as you process this new bee research:  CCD, or colony collapse disorder in honeybees, does not have a single cause.  It’s likely that many different factors work together to create CCD.  It is a complex set of specific symptoms, and it’s been known since around 1900 by many other names. Additionally, not all observed bee declines (and deaths) are CCD. It’s hard out there for a bee.

There is clearly a pesticide problem with bees–even if we can’t fully quantify it right now.  The Xerces Society white paper, A Review of Research into the Effects of Neonicotinoid Insecticides on Bees, with Recommendations for Action, had this to say about CCD:

“There is no direct link demonstrated between neonicotinoids and the honeybee bee syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder. However, recent research suggests that nenonicotinoids may make honey bees more susceptible to parasites and pathogens….which has been implicated as one causitive factor for CCD.”

The Xerces paper is probably the best review of the recent research that you are going to find.  Not only is it written by Xerces scientists, who are folks what really know their bees, it also was reviewed by several other bee researchers I have a great deal of respect for.

Data table from the Xerces report showing...lots of gaps

Xerces thoroughly documents what we know about these pesticides and bees–and, unfortunately, we don’t know nearly enough. Most of the published research focuses on honey bees, rather than the native bee species in the US.  (Honey bees are an introduced species in North America).  That means we don’t have much data to work with to figure out how different bee species will be affected.

Personally, I found the most disturbing piece of the Xerces report to be their discovery of how many of these neonicotinoid insecticides are available over the counter to homeowners.  Calculating pesticide application rates is one of the toughest parts of farming (or pesticide applicator exams), and Xerces does the math to uncover some startling facts:

• “Products approved for homeowners to use in gardens, lawns, and on ornamental trees have manufacturer-recommended application rates up to 120 times higher than rates approved for agricultural crops. 
• Many neonicotinoid pesticides that are sold to homeowners for use on lawns and gardens do not have any mention of the risks of these products to bees, and the label guidance for products used in agriculture is not always clear or consistent.
• Neonicotinoids can persist in soil for months or years after a single application. Measurable amounts of residues were found in woody plants up to six years after application.”

That is really scary.

Xerces raises some very important questions about what this means for our native bees that are already struggling with habitat loss and a spill-over of parasites and pathogens from introduced bee species. Butterflies, beetles, and flies also drink nectar and feed on pollen–pretty much any of our pollinators, including hummingbirds, could be affected if they feed on trees and plants treated with these insecticides.

I hope that new labeling is introduced so consumers know that these products have the potential to kill bees and other pollinators.  Unfortunately, because these pesticides are so very useful in agriculture, there are no easy answers. The things that make these compounds so very well suited for so many purposes–their ability to remain stable for a long time and spread through plant tissues–are also why they pose dangers for pollinating insects.

Additional Reading: 

• The Xerces White Paper on Bees and Neonicotinoid pesticides
• Carl Zimmer’s NYT article on Bees and Neonicotinoid pesticides
• Xerces guide to promoting native bees; tons of free information to download!
• Take a short training course on creating bee-friendly habitat!

Return of Waspzilla

Click to enbiggen. WOW.

You might remember this story from last August, when the discovery of a species of Waspthulu was announced. The researchers just published the first paper describing this species.  Its name is now Megalara garuda. 

“Because of the spectacular appearance of the male of this species, it is named after the “Garuda”, the national symbol of Indonesia; a mythical bird-like, warrior creature.”

I propose as a common name “Waspzilla,” “Waspthulu”, or maybe “Hymenoptosaurus.” Just how big is it?

The male measures about two-and-a-half-inches long, Kimsey said. “Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male’s front legs. I don’t know how it can walk. The females are smaller but still larger than other members of their subfamily, Larrinae.”

These wasps are in a group commonly known as digger wasps or sand wasps, and typically are predators.  The biology of this species is still not known.   In fact, this species has never been observed alive.

The really fascinating new piece of the puzzle revealed by the research paper is that this species is not completely new to Western scientists. One specimen of this wasp was collected by a German entomologist in the 1930s from the same area–but not described.   Taxonomic entomologists do tend to pin first, ask questions later.

To be fair, untangling the life history of an insect is an incredibly complex task.  Lots of an insect’s life happens in places very inaccessible to humans.  It can take decades to begin to understand where and how insects make a living.

The authors believe the freaky jaws on the male are sexual dimorphism  (males and females have very different appearances), and suspect they are somehow involved in mating displays or conflict over mating. Perhaps these jaws are the equivalent of deer antlers, or beetle horns.

Unfortunately, finding out more about this species will not be easy:

“Sulawesi, a large Indonesian island located between Borneo and New Guinea, is known not only for its endemic biodiversity, but its rainforest and its proximity to the equator.  Development threatens plant and animal life.… The terrain was steep, slippery and overall, physically challenging, Lynn Kimsey said. “This part of Sulawesi gets about 400 inches of rain a year,” she said. “We were told that Sulawesi has a dry and rainy season. But the only difference we could see between the dry and rainy season is that during the dry season, it rains only in the afternoon.

Kimsey is a collaborator of a five-year $4 million grant awarded to UC Davis scientists in 2008 to study the biodiversity of fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates on Sulawesi, all considered threatened by logging operations and mining developments. Much of the mountain was logged two decades ago and now there are plans for an open pit nickel mine, Kimsey said.”

Pit mining has a dismal record for being environmentally friendly–one major pit mine in Indonesia dumps its tailings directly into the ocean.  It’s entirely possible that we will never know more about this species than the few specimens collected.

The grant funding this research is looking, in part, for species of medicinal and commercial value in the Sulawesi rainforest before it’s plowed up. I think we should care about this wasp not because it has utilitarian value to us, but because it is another example of the amazing evolutionary history and diversity of life on earth.  I don’t know how to save that area, and make it possible for the people living there to thrive as well as wasps. But I can hope.

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
–Charles Darwin

—–

Citation:
Kimsey, L., & Ohl, M. (2012). Megalara garuda, a new genus and species of larrine wasps from Indonesia (Larrinae, Crabronidae, Hymenoptera) ZooKeys, 177 DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.177.2475

Crowd-sourcing Ant Science

Earlier this week, the internets were buzzing with a claim that Kickstarter is funding more projects than the National Endowment for the Arts.  It turns out that may not be strictly true, but it certainly is true that a lot of cool projects are being crowd-sourced that otherwise would never have made it off the ground.

I’ve mentioned some insecty Kickstarter projects before, like Meet The Beetle (a film about an endangered tiger beetle).  Unfortunately, Kickstarter is limited to arts and humanities. But now the concept of crowdsourcing has been harnessed for science!

Petridish.org is so new it hardly has a bacterial film growing on its website yet. Its first science crowd-sourcing project involves two awesome things: Insects and Madagascar.

“Unique” doesn’t begin to describe Madagascar. This giant island split from the African Continent over 160 million years ago, and over 90% of it’s mammal and reptile species occur no where else in the world.  Deforestation and erosion are critical threats to the island’s ecosystems, and many native species are endangered.

Brian Fisher, one of the folks behind AntWeb, is leading a project to document the ant species of a high remote preserve.   You might be wondering why you should care about ants in Madagascar.  You may especially be wondering this because you have figured out that at some point later in this post I’m going to hit you up for a donation.  I really like this statement from AntWeb that puts ants in context:

“At this moment, more than one thousand trillion ants are scurrying all over the Earth. If every human climbed aboard one side of a scale, and every ant crawled onto the other side, the scale would just about balance.”

Ants probably move more earth and recycle more dead things yearly than a whole army of human undertakers with bulldozers ever could.  Ants are a critical part of making the world’s living systems function.  The project description:

“Ants are the glue that hold forests together. But Madagascar’s hotspots of biodiversity are vanishing, and along with them unknown species. An estimated 40 percent of the island’s species, in fact, have already perished through human encroachment.

While ants aren’t as popular as furry and feathery animals, the insects turn over forest soil, breakdown debris, disperse crucial nutrients and otherwise support an unimaginable number of species both up, down and across the food chain. The insects are also a growing resource for antimicrobial and antifungal compound discovery, as many ants manufacture such chemicals to ward off disease and even farm food.

I need to reach one of the last standing pristine forests, called the Kasijy, before nearby populations burn them down to raise cattle. Researchers have visited the remote site only a handful of times because it’s a rugged, canyon-filled landscape resting on high blocks of limestone and sedimentary rock.Because Kasijy is so pristine, it also serves as a crucial data point of what Madagascar used to be like before the advent of modern civilization. The region and other forests are great places to understand the ongoing impacts of climate change on highly specialized ecosystems.

My expedition aims to:

• Inventory Kasijy’s untold new species and document their roles in a pristine natural ecosystem.
• Understand the biodiversity patterns of Madagascar and resolve our “bioilliteracy” of the Kasijy forest.
• Set up more robust conservation plans for the island.
• Raise awareness of Madagascar’s natural wonders and its ongoing plight.”

There are 39 days left to fund this project–I hope you can spare a dollar or two to help a researcher out!  Note that a large gift gets you acknowledged in any manuscripts published from this research.

Donate!

Bee Basics

I realized that I had posted about this new publication on Twitter, but not here–this must be remedied ASAP!
A beautiful publication was recently released by the USDA Forest Service and the Pollinator Partnership:

Bee Basics: An Introduction to Our Native Bees
By Beatriz Moisset and Stephen Buchmann.

“The full-color 40 page booklet is jam-packed with information about how representative bees of 3,500 species inhabiting the US and bordering areas make a living, which flowers they visit, whether they nest underground or in hollow stems or wood. The diversity of bees is examined along with notes on their wasp ancestry. The lives of leafcutter, mason, bumble bees, miners and others is explored…. Tips for easy things gardeners, home owners and naturalists can do to protect and conserve bees and their flowers are given. “

It is about as nice an introduction to basic bee biology as you could ask for, with the bonus of beautiful artwork.  If you haven’t downloaded your free copy of the PDF, get with the clicking!!

Lord of the Ants

When I first heard the title of this television show, my first thought was that it would involve a dancing E. O. Wilson in tights. Sadly, no.
Or, maybe that’s a good thing–you tell me.  I think Dancing with the Stars could really use an evolutionary biologist to liven things up.

Either way, this is a neat profile of someone who’s been incredibly influential in biology for the last 50 years.   I don’t agree with everything he’s written, since I tend to think more along the lines of Lewontin in terms of my issues with sociobiology.  The  idea of a “unified theory” of animal behavior is a snipe hunt. (There is also a nice biography of Wilson in the Atlantic this week, BTW, where he has some surprisingly harsh words for Stephen J. Gould over this topic.)

However!
Wilson’s work on biodiversity, biogeography, ecology, and conservation is solid and important.  He used his unexpected fame (infamy?) to really push forward conservation. He took his bully pulpit and did something with it.

Enjoy this long interview with Dr. Wilson.  He IS the Lord of the Ants.
(I can also report that he’s charming in person, and I’m fairly sure he will find my photoshopping liberties amusing.)

Lost Bumblebees of Denmark

One of the really cool things about Entomology is there are a lot of opportunities for longitudinal studies. For hundreds of years, bug nerds have been routinely killing and preserving the subjects of their studies, so we have a nice historical record to make comparisons with.

A new paper in PLOS came out recently that did a nice job of reproducing the sampling methods of a bee study from 80 years ago–and the results are a bit depressing.

I’ve covered before the importance of native pollinators, and bumble bees provide important pollination services to crop plants–in this study, red clover. Red Clover is a great pick for a pollination study, since it is self-incompatible–in other words, it can’t fertilize itself, and is dependent on pollinators to move pollen around for any reproduction.

The investigators were interested in seeing how bumble species might have changed over time because of changes in climate, tilling practices, and overall landscape changes.   They managed to find plots to survey that were remarkably like the initial 1930′s study, and started catching bumblebees.

The news isn’t good.

The 1930 study identified 12 species of bees as common in fields of clover; 5 of them were not detected at all in this modern survey.  The bumblebee species that vanished were also what is called “long-tongued” species.   Bumble bees occupy a special pollination space, since as bigger animals, they have longer tongues.  This lets them work flowers that smaller honeybees can’t reach into.

Bumble bees also are able to forage at low temperatures, and can buzz pollinate.  (Some plants only release their pollen when they are vibrated at specific frequencies.)

Bumbles are critical to what are called “ecosystem services,”–the stuff we get for free just for living on Earth.  Like pollination of our food crops by wild pollinators, which in the US is valued around 6 billion dollars.

When you look at the graphs, it’s pretty clear–the number of species and the frequency (commonness) of species declined. As best I can tell from the paper, it seems to me that the modern researchers actually sampled more intensively than in the past.  Here’s what the authors have to say:

“For long-tongued species, abundances of queens was found to decline an order of magnitude from the 1930′s to the present, corresponding to a dramatic decline in effective population sizes. Findings of the present study are strong and direct evidence of local changes in species richness and abundances.”

Yikes.  But, you may be thinking, so what? Some bumblebees went away.

I can’t tell you what the consequences of this change will be, but I can tell you I am fairly sure it won’t be a good thing. I think Aldo Leopold said it best:

Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: “What good is it?”  If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

Citation:

Dupont YL, Damgaard C, & Simonsen V (2011). Quantitative Historical Change in Bumblebee (Bombus spp.) Assemblages of Red Clover Fields. PloS one, 6 (9) PMID: 21966445

Waspthulu discovered in Indonesia

Click to enbiggen. WOW.

News of an amazing new species found in Indonesia!

“The jaw-dropping, shiny black wasp appears to be the “Komodo dragon” of the wasp family.

It’s huge. The male measures about two-and-a-half-inches long, Kimsey said. “Its jaws are so large that they wrap up either side of the head when closed. When the jaws are open they are actually longer than the male’s front legs. I don’t know how it can walk. The females are smaller but still larger than other members of their subfamily, Larrinae.”

I’m not so sure about the Komodo Dragon part, but I’d go for “Waspadon”, or maybe “Hymenoptosaurus”.

These wasps are in a group commonly known as digger wasps or sand wasps, and typically are predators.  The biology of this species is still not known well.  Taxonomic entomologists tend to pin first, ask questions later.

To be fair, untangling the life history of an insect is an incredibly complex task.  Lots of an insect’s life happens in places very inaccessible to humans. Treetops of a rainforest. Underground. Inside the body of another insect.  It can take decades to begin to understand where and how insects make a living.

I can’t wait to find out what this thing eats, and what those freaky jaws on the male are for!  Usually when you have sexual dimorphism in a species (males and females have very different appearances), that means it’s somehow involved in mating displays, or conflict over mating. Perhaps these jaws are the equivalent of deer antlers, or beetle horns.

Unfortunately, finding out more about this species will not be easy:

“Sulawesi, a large Indonesian island located between Borneo and New Guinea, is known not only for its endemic biodiversity, but its rainforest and its proximity to the equator.  Development threatens plant and animal life.… The terrain was steep, slippery and overall, physically challenging, Lynn Kimsey said. “This part of Sulawesi gets about 400 inches of rain a year,” she said. “We were told that Sulawesi has a dry and rainy season. But the only difference we could see between the dry and rainy season is that during the dry season, it rains only in the afternoon.

Kimsey is a collaborator of a five-year $4 million grant awarded to UC Davis scientists in 2008 to study the biodiversity of fungi, bacteria, plants, insects and vertebrates on Sulawesi, all considered threatened by logging operations and mining developments. Much of the mountain was logged two decades ago and now there are plans for an open pit nickel mine, Kimsey said.”

Pit mining has a dismal record for being environmentally friendly–one major pit mine in Indonesia dumps its tailings directly into the ocean.  It’s entirely possible that we will never know more about this species than the few specimens collected.

The grant funding this research is looking, in part, for species of medicinal and commercial value in the Sulawesi rainforest before it’s plowed up. I think we should care about this wasp not because it has utilitarian value to us, but because it is another example of the amazing evolutionary history and diversity of life on earth.  I don’t know how to save that area, and make it possible for the people living there to thrive as well as wasps. But I can hope.

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
–Charles Darwin

—–

BTW, Thanks to Twitter and FB folk for the suggestions of alternate wasp names!  Wade, Clyde, and Ben.

New Pollinator Conservation Resource Center!

The Xerces Society’s Pollinator Conservation Resource Center is now on-line!

It has a clickable map of North America; you can find all sorts of resources indexed there.  For example, there is a Guide to Upper Midwest plants for Native Bees! Enjoy the downloading.

I could not resist this photo of an adorable little bee, even if it isn’t a North American bee; the colors were so lovely! Thanks to AussieGal for sharing!

The Feather Trade

We are in the process of upgrading some materials around where I work, and as a consequence we’ve been looking for materials about birds, conservation, and the historic use of birds and bird parts in the US. I happened to stumble over this really nifty Smithsonian online exhibit:

The Feather Trade

Really interesting information!

Do you have any other resources you’d like to recommend on this topic? Sources of photos? I’d love to hear from you.

Also, a discussion point: is using a photo like this–now shocking and reaction provoking–acceptable in materials designed to discuss conservation of larger bird species that were hunted?

Earthworm Research

Since we talked about earthworms last week…how about a little research?

When I was a kid I was taught that earthworms were good. Lots of worms was a sign of a healthy soil.

As I got older, I discovered that isn’t entirely true–some midwest soils didn’t have earthworms until Europeans showed up.  Some soils had a whole fauna of American worms that were displaced by the invasive, introduced earthworms.  There are at least 45 different species of non-native earthworms in the US right now.

It leaves me rather conflicted about earthworms, as a gardener.

Earthworms cause basic changes in the structure, biology, and chemistry of soil.  In gardens and (many) agricultural lands, worms are a good thing. They increase soil drainage and mix organic matter down into the soil.

But…hardwood forests in the Midwest are not used to having worms.  The last glaciation killed the native worms off.  Several different researchers have documented that as biomass of earthworms increases, the amount of forest understory growth decreases, and fewer trees had seedlings. That means the forest is less likely to regenerate itself as trees age and die. Not good.

Recently, a team of researchers wanted to see if they could find out what earthworms are doing to the chemistry of carbon cycling in forests. On clearing the floor:

“The earthworms that the team studies were brought to North America by early European colonists, probably in the ships’ ballasts or in plant soil….In some areas of the forest, more than 350 worms can be found in one square meter.  “The impact of that many worms is huge for the forest ecosystem as from spring to fall they actively consume litter and mix it into the soil, leaving only a bare surface by year’s end.” Filley said.

In contrast, sites that have no earthworms have many years of accumulated litter and organic matter above the soil. This has implications for plant seed germination, water holding capacity and infiltration of the forest floor, among other things.

Decomposition of leaves and twigs by bacteria and fungi is normally the primary source of nutrients in the forest.  Cycling of nutrients from leaves and other materials that fall to the forest floor is critical to maintaining the health of the forest.

This study concluded that part of the problem is that earth worms poop out lots of lignin–a very difficult compound for soil bacteria to break apart. Interestingly, the net effect of this could be to latch onto more carbon, (“carbon sequestration”), rather than to release it for use to plants or in the atmosphere.  So while worms are not so good for the forest, they could potentially be good for keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.

Which to choose? In some places, there is no choice. The worms are here to stay.

If you live in the Midwest, please check out the Great Lakes Worm Watch before you order worms for composting, or let that fishing worm go!

Citations:

Filley, T., McCormick, M., Crow, S., Szlavecz, K., Whigham, D., Johnston, C., & van den Heuvel, R. (2008). Comparison of the chemical alteration trajectory of leaf litter among forests with different earthworm abundance
Journal of Geophysical Research, 113 (G1) DOI: 10.1029/2007JG000542

Additional references:
Hale, C., Frelich, L., & Reich, P. (2006). CHANGES IN HARDWOOD FOREST UNDERSTORY PLANT COMMUNITIES IN RESPONSE TO EUROPEAN EARTHWORM INVASIONS Ecology, 87 (7), 1637-1649 DOI: 10.1890/0012-9658(2006)87[1637:CIHFUP]2.0.CO;2