Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, 2415 Speedway, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Department of Biology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA.
Biol Lett. 2019 Jul 26;15(7):20190359. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2019.0359. Epub 2019 Jul 31.
Neonicotinoid pesticides can impair bees' ability to learn and remember information about flowers, critical for effective foraging. Although these effects on cognition may contribute to broader effects on health and performance, to date they have largely been assayed in simplified protocols that consider learning in a single sensory modality, usually olfaction. Given that real flowers display a variety of potentially useful signals, we assessed the effects of acute neonicotinoid exposure on multimodal learning in free-flying bumblebees. We found that neonicotinoid consumption differentially impacted learning of floral stimuli, impairing scent, but not colour, learning. These findings raise questions about the mechanisms by which pesticides might differentially impair sensory systems, with implications for how neonicotinoids affect multiple aspects of bee ecology.
新烟碱类杀虫剂会损害蜜蜂学习和记忆有关花朵信息的能力，而这对有效觅食至关重要。尽管这些对认知的影响可能会对健康和性能产生更广泛的影响，但迄今为止，它们在很大程度上是通过考虑单一感觉模式（通常是嗅觉）中的学习的简化方案来检测的。鉴于真实的花朵显示出多种潜在有用的信号，我们评估了急性新烟碱类杀虫剂暴露对自由飞行的熊蜂的多模态学习的影响。我们发现，新烟碱类杀虫剂的消耗会对花朵刺激的学习产生不同的影响，损害了气味学习，但不影响颜色学习。这些发现提出了有关杀虫剂如何以不同的方式损害感觉系统的机制的问题，这对新烟碱类杀虫剂如何影响蜜蜂生态的多个方面有影响。
