Meeting Abstract
The agriculture industry relies on pesticides for crop production, but growing evidence suggests that sublethal effects of pesticides are a primary factor in the worldwide decline of insect pollinators. Neonicitinoids are a widely-used, advanced class of insecticides that are highly toxic to bees. Even at low levels, neonicitinoids can have pronounced sublethal effects, with new research linking exposure to impaired winterization, a distinct trait of Colony Collapse Disorder. However, the physiology underlying sublethal thermal effects in bees is largely unknown. We investigated the effects of imidacloprid on critical thermal minima and maxima of Bombus impatiens to better understand the effects of this class of insecticides on thermal physiology. We assessed and quantified these limits using a new high-throughput assay to test how critical thermal limits vary after exposure to field-realistic imidacloprid concentrations.
