Science Inventory

Pollinators provide ecological services essential to maintaining our food supply and propagating natural habitats. However, populations are in serious decline due to causative environmental stressors including pesticides, pathogens, poor nutrition, and habitat loss. To better und...

Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) are one of the most important managed pollinators of agricultural crops. While potential effects of agricultural pesticides on honey bee health have been investigated in some settings, risks to honey bees associated with exposures occurring in the p...

Hummingbirds are charismatic fauna that provide important pollination services, including in the continental US, where 15 species regularly breed. Compared to other birds in North America, hummingbirds (family Trochilidae) have a unique exposure route to pesticides because they f...

 Neonicotinoid insecticides are some of the fastest growing and most commonly used pesticides globally. Imidacloprid (IMI), a primary neonicotinoid, has become a ubiquitous contaminant in surface waters near agricultural areas. IMI is effective in the prevention of insect in...

Bumble bees are important pollinators for both native plants and managed agricultural systems. Accumulating evidence has shown that pesticides, including neonicotinoids, can have a range of adverse effects on bumble bee health. Most laboratory studies that assess the effects of c...

Global regulation of chemicals is shifting away from whole animal toxicity testing for decision-making and exploring the utility of new approach methods (NAMs), which include computational techniques and high-throughput screening methods to understand chemical toxicity. Primarily...

Honey bees are crucial pollinators for agricultural crops but are threatened by a multitude of stressors including exposure to pesticides. Linking our understanding of how pesticides affect individual bees to colony-level responses is challenging because colonies show emergent pr...

The regulatory landscape is shifting away from whole animal testing for decision-making and exploring the utility of new approach methods (NAMs), which include computational techniques to understand chemical toxicity. Primarily these efforts have focused on reducing the use of ve...

Pesticide impacts to colonies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) are of increasing concern due to the importance of honeybees as crop pollinators. Honeybees have a multi-stage life history driven by a complex social system and make use of both fresh and stored food resources. This com...

Pollinators, such as bees, provide an essential function in the environment fertilizing plants including food crops relied upon for livestock and human consumption. Due to an increased awareness of declining pollinator health, there are global efforts to protect pollinators from ...

Honey bees and other wild bee species including bumble bees have experienced population declines in recent decades. While many stressors are implicated in bee population declines, much attention has focused on neonicotinoid pesticides, which are widely used and known to be toxic ...

Bumble bees (Bombus sp) are important pollinators for agricultural systems and natural landscapes and have faced population declines globally in recent decades. Neonicotinoid pesticides have been implicated in the population reductions in bumble bees, and other pollinators, due t...

Pesticide chemicals are increasingly engineered to have insect-specific activity. A side effect of this targeting is that some classes of modern pesticides are implicated in impacting beneficial insects, such as honey bees and wild pollinators. When testing new pesticides, tradit...

Honey bees are important pollinators of crops, but are impacted by exposure to pesticides. It’s challenging to link pesticide effects on individual bees to colony-level responses, because hives have complex internal processes. We present a method for inferring individual-...

EPA is responsible for evaluating the effects of pesticides on beneficial insects such as bees. The Agency developed a risk assessment process where honey bees are used as a surrogate for predicting toxicity in other species of bees including bumble bees. Bumble bees are importa...

We employ Monte Carlo simulation and sensitivity analysis techniques to describe the population dynamics of pesticide exposure to a honey bee colony using the VarroaPop + Pesticide model. Simulations are performed of hive population trajectories with and without pesti...

Pollinators provide critical ecological services essential to maintaining our food supply and valued natural habitats. Multiple environmental stressors impact the health of managed and native bees in the US and abroad. To satisfy U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requir...

Populations of some managed and wild pollinators are in decline as a result of multiple interacting factors including parasites, disease, poor nutrition and pesticides. The role that diminished immunity plays in these declines is not understood. The U.S. Environmental Protectio...

Populations of some managed and wild pollinators are in decline as a result of multiple interacting factors including parasites, disease, poor nutrition and pesticides. The role that diminished immunity plays in these declines is not understood. The U.S. Environmental Protection ...

Concern surrounding the potential adverse impacts of pesticides to honey bee colonies has led to the need for rapid/cost efficient methods for aiding decision making relative to the protection of this important pollinator species. Neonicotinoids represent a class of pesticides th...