Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, 2415 Speedway, Austin, TX 78712, USA; School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, 24, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TQ, UK.
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, 2415 Speedway, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Sci Total Environ. 2023 Feb 1;858(Pt 2):159839. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159839. Epub 2022 Nov 2.
Globally documented wild bee declines threaten sustainable food production and natural ecosystem functioning. Urban environments are often florally abundant, and consequently can contain high levels of pollinator diversity compared with agricultural environments. This has led to the suggestion that urban environments are an increasingly important habitat for pollinators. However, pesticides, such as commercial bug sprays, have a range of lethal and sub-lethal impacts on bees and are widely available for public use, with past work indicating that managed bees (honeybees and bumblebees) are exposed to a range of pesticides in urban environments. Despite this, we still have a poor understanding of (i) whether wild bees foraging in urban environments are exposed to pesticides and (ii) if exposure differs between genera. Here we assessed pesticide exposure in 8 bee genera foraging across multiple urban landscapes. We detected 13 different pesticides, some at concentrations known to have sub-lethal impacts on pollinators. Both the likelihood of pesticides being detected, and the concentrations observed, were higher for larger bees, likely due to their greater foraging ranges. Our results suggest that restricting agrochemical use in urban environments, where the economic benefits are limited, is a simple way to reduce anthropogenic stress on wild bees.
全球有记录的野生蜜蜂数量减少威胁着可持续的粮食生产和自然生态系统的功能。城市环境通常花卉丰富，因此与农业环境相比，可能拥有更高水平的传粉媒介多样性。这导致了城市环境对传粉媒介来说是一个越来越重要的栖息地的说法。然而，杀虫剂，如商业杀虫剂，对蜜蜂有一系列致命和亚致死的影响，并且广泛供公众使用，过去的工作表明，管理蜜蜂（蜜蜂和熊蜂）在城市环境中接触到一系列杀虫剂。尽管如此，我们仍然对（i）在城市环境中觅食的野生蜜蜂是否接触到杀虫剂，以及（ii）接触的程度是否因属而异知之甚少。在这里，我们评估了在多个城市景观中觅食的 8 种蜜蜂属的杀虫剂暴露情况。我们检测到了 13 种不同的杀虫剂，其中一些浓度已知对传粉媒介有亚致死影响。被检测到的杀虫剂的可能性，以及观察到的浓度，对于较大的蜜蜂来说更高，这可能是由于它们更大的觅食范围。我们的研究结果表明，限制城市环境中农业化学物质的使用，在那里经济利益是有限的，是减少人为对野生蜜蜂压力的一种简单方法。
