Meeting Abstract
Prior research by our group has investigated the pesticide avoidance hypothesis for pollinators in urban and agricultural habitats using pan trap studies. These and other studies suggest that insect taxa differ in their orientation (attraction, avoidance, or neutral) toward pan traps containing neonicotinoids or pyrethroids and, therefore, the effects of pesticides may be intensified or moderated by behavior of some taxa. For this experiment, we examined the effect of an agricultural dose rate reported for sunflowers of Confidor SC 350 (a commercial formulation of imidacloprid) on insects visiting natural vegetation found in fallow agricultural fields in Canakkale, Turkey. We used a before-after experimental design on 15 1-M2 plots arranged in three rows each of five plots. All plots were separated from adjacent plots by 2 meters. Pollinator visitation was monitored during antithesis for 5 minutes per plot hourly, beginning at 7:30 and ending at 13:30 daily. The total number of insect visits per plot was recorded during each observation period. The total number of pollinator visits decreased after the application of the Confidor SC 350. This result generally supports the pesticide avoidance hypothesis but future analysis of taxa-specific responses to the treatment.
