Neonicotinoid exposure affects foraging, nesting, and reproductive success of ground-nesting solitary bees
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite their indispensable role in food production 1,2 , insect pollinators are threatened by multiple environmental stressors, including pesticide exposure 2-4 . Although honeybees are important, most pollinating insect species are wild, solitary, ground-nesting bees 1,4-6 that are inadequately represented by honeybee-centric regulatory pesticide risk assessment frameworks 7,8 . Here, for the first time, we evaluate the effects of realistic exposure to systemic insecticides (imidacloprid, thiamethoxam or chlorantraniliprole) on a ground-nesting bee species in a semi-field experiment. Hoary squash bees ( Eucera ( Peponapis ) pruinosa ) provide essential pollination services to North American pumpkin and squash crops 9-14 and commonly nest within cropping areas 10 , placing them at risk of exposure to pesticides in soil 8,10 , nectar and pollen 15,16 . Hoary squash bees exposed to an imidacloprid-treated crop initiated 85% fewer nests, left 84% more pollen unharvested, and produced 89% fewer offspring than untreated controls. We found no measurable impact on squash bees from exposure to thiamethoxam- or chlorantraniliprole-treated crops. Our results demonstrate important sublethal effects of field-realistic exposure to a soil-applied neonicotinoid (imidacloprid) on the behaviour and reproductive success of a ground-nesting solitary bee. To prevent potential declines in ground-nesting bee populations and associated impoverishment of crop pollination services, soil must be considered a possible route of pesticide exposure for bees, and restrictions on soil-applied insecticides may be justified.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".