Abstract
In the last few years, with the increase in agricultural productivity, there has also been an increase in the use of insecticides to combat insects considered pests. However, these chemical compounds end up affecting nontarget insects that also interact with the crops. Studies have shown that social bees are among the insects that are suffering most from the effects of these compounds, resulting in negative ecological and economic impacts, considering that these insects provide pollination services in ecosystems. At the same time, social wasps also interact with plants, including cultivated ones, and perform ecological services similar to those of social bees, so it can be hypothesized that insecticides are also affecting social wasp colonies. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate contamination and sublethal effects of neonicotinoids on the mobility of the social wasp Protopolybia exigua (Saussure). In the first step, oral exposure experiments were performed to determine lethal and sublethal concentrations. In a second step, the wasps were exposed to sublethal concentrations, in order to evaluate the effects on their mobility. The results demonstrated that this species is more susceptible to exposure to neonicotinoids, compared to several bee species that have so far been studied, but lower than others. Exposure to sublethal concentrations can significantly reduce wasp mobility, which can have short-term consequences both for worker wasps and for the maintenance of their colonies.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Funding
The authors would like to thank the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES) – funding code 001. In addition to Fundação de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento do Ensino, Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Mato Grosso do Sul (FUNDECT), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) (concession numbers: 308182/2019–7 WFAJ and 400540/2018–5 RCFN), and to São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for supporting this study with grants 2017/21097–3 (RCFN).
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Paula Danyelle Crispim: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, data curation, writing — original draft, visualization. Vinicius Edson Soares de Oliveira: methodology, investigation. Nathan Rodrigues Batista: methodology, investigation, formal analysis, data curation, writing — review and editing. Roberta Cornélio Ferreira Nocelli: conceptualization, validation, writing — review and editing, visualization, supervision. William Fernando Antonialli-Junior: conceptualization, validation, resources, writing — review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.
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Crispim, P.D., de Oliveira, V.E.S., Batista, N.R. et al. Lethal and Sublethal Dose of Thiamethoxam and Its Effects on the Behavior of a Non-target Social Wasp. Neotrop Entomol 52, 422–430 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-023-01028-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-023-01028-2