Institut de Recherche sur la Biologie de l'Insecte, UMR 7261, CNRS, University of Tours, Tours, France.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021 Aug;28(29):39501-39512. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-13511-7. Epub 2021 Mar 23.
Although pesticides are typically used to limit pest population, the diversity and nature of their unintentional effects on non-target organisms remain unclear. Better understanding these effects requires to carry out risk assessments on key physiological and behavioral processes specific to beneficial insects. In this study, we addressed this question by exposing mothers of the European earwig (a beneficial insect) to two sublethal doses of deltamethrin (a common pesticide in agriculture) during family life and measured the short- and long-term effects on a series of behavioral, physiological, and reproductive traits. Somewhat surprisingly, our results first revealed that high and low doses of deltamethrin enhanced mothers' future reproduction by augmenting their likelihood to produce a second clutch, shortening the number of days until its production, and increasing the resulting number of eggs and their hatching rate. Conversely, the high dose of deltamethrin was detrimental, as it limited maternal brood defence, and reduced food consumption and expression of self-grooming. Finally, other traits were independent of deltamethrin exposure, such as three proxies of family interactions (i.e., distance to the brood, occurrence, and duration of mother-offspring contacts), mothers' walking distance, and mother weight gain during family life. Our study overall demonstrates that sublethal exposure to a pesticide such as deltamethrin can have both positive and negative effects on non-target beneficial insects. It thus emphasizes that focusing on narrow parameters can lead to misleading conclusions about the unintended impacts of pesticides in treated agro-ecosystems and call for better considering this parameters diversity in integrated pest management programs.
虽然杀虫剂通常用于限制害虫种群，但它们对非目标生物的无意影响的多样性和性质仍不清楚。更好地了解这些影响需要对有益昆虫特有的关键生理和行为过程进行风险评估。在这项研究中，我们通过在家庭生活中使欧洲螽斯（一种有益昆虫）的母亲接触两种亚致死剂量的溴氰菊酯（农业中常用的一种杀虫剂）来解决这个问题，并测量了一系列行为、生理和繁殖特征的短期和长期影响。令人惊讶的是，我们的研究结果首先表明，高剂量和低剂量的溴氰菊酯通过增加母亲产生第二窝卵的可能性、缩短产生第二窝卵的天数以及增加产生的卵数和孵化率，增强了母亲未来的繁殖能力。相反，高剂量的溴氰菊酯是有害的，因为它限制了母代的育雏防御，减少了食物消耗和自我梳理的表达。最后，其他特征与溴氰菊酯暴露无关，例如家庭互动的三个代理指标（即与幼虫的距离、母子接触的发生和持续时间）、母亲的行走距离以及母亲在家庭生活中的体重增加。我们的研究总体表明，亚致死接触杀虫剂（如溴氰菊酯）会对非目标有益昆虫产生正反两方面的影响。因此，这强调了只关注狭窄参数可能会导致对处理后的农业生态系统中杀虫剂的意外影响产生误导性结论，并呼吁在综合虫害管理计划中更好地考虑这些参数的多样性。
