Tatarko Anna R, Richman Sarah K, Leonard Anne S
Department of Biology, University of Nevada-Reno, Reno, Nevada, 89557, USA.
Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
Funct Ecol. 2025 Jul;39(7):1815-1825. doi: 10.1111/1365-2435.70053. Epub 2025 Apr 18.
Pesticide use has become widespread around the globe, and mounting evidence has demonstrated health impacts on non-target insects such as bees. However, less is known about whether the presence of these chemicals in plant tissue can alter interactions between plants, pollinators, and floral microbes. Here we asked if the presence of an insecticide and fungicide alters pollinator visitation, the abundance of floral fungi, and seed set.We treated the wildflower ( = 126) with commercially available products containing the insecticide imidacloprid, the fungicide tebuconazole, the combination of both products, or a water control.We found the best predictor of pollinator visitation was flower number, not treatment; although flower number indirectly enhanced visitation to plants treated with the fungicide and plants treated with the combination of both chemicals, fewer flowers reduced visitation to insecticide treated plants. No clear patterns emerged in the abundance of floral fungi, which was not strongly affected by either visitation rates or chemical treatments. Finally, seed number and mass were positively related to visitation. However, although plants treated with the fungicide alone or in combination received the most visits, seed number and mass were lower than expected in these treatments, and we found evidence for direct negative effects of all chemical treatments on seed metrics (although these effects were variable).This study shows that plants containing harmful chemicals can be visited just as frequently, if not more, as those without. The inadvertent contamination of wildflowers with multiple agricultural chemicals is increasingly common and risks forming an ecological trap for pollinators that are not deterred by plants that pose a health risk. Finally, the impact of pesticides on wild plants is rarely considered, and we urge future studies to further examine downstream consequences of this exposure to wild plant fitness.
农药的使用在全球范围内已变得十分普遍，越来越多的证据表明其对蜜蜂等非目标昆虫的健康产生影响。然而，对于这些化学物质在植物组织中的存在是否会改变植物、传粉者和花部微生物之间的相互作用，我们却知之甚少。在此，我们探讨了杀虫剂和杀菌剂的存在是否会改变传粉者的访花频率、花部真菌的丰度以及结实率。我们用含有杀虫剂吡虫啉、杀菌剂戊唑醇、两者组合的市售产品或水对照处理了126株野花。我们发现，传粉者访花频率的最佳预测指标是花朵数量，而非处理方式；尽管花朵数量间接增加了对用杀菌剂处理的植物以及用两种化学物质组合处理的植物的访花频率，但花朵数量减少会降低对用杀虫剂处理的植物的访花频率。花部真菌的丰度未呈现出明显模式，其受访花率或化学处理的影响均不强烈。最后，种子数量和质量与访花频率呈正相关。然而，尽管单独使用杀菌剂或两者组合处理的植物获得的访花次数最多，但这些处理中的种子数量和质量却低于预期，并且我们发现所有化学处理对种子指标均有直接负面影响（尽管这些影响存在差异）。这项研究表明，含有有害化学物质的植物被访花的频率即便不比不含这些物质的植物更高，至少也一样。野花被多种农用化学品意外污染的情况日益普遍，这有可能为传粉者形成一个生态陷阱，而传粉者不会被那些对其健康构成风险的植物所吓阻。最后，农药对野生植物的影响很少被考虑，我们敦促未来的研究进一步探究这种暴露对野生植物适合度的下游后果。
