Abstract
The European honey bee, Apis mellifera, is the most common and important pollinator of crops worldwide. Honey bees are damaged by destructive parasitic mites, but they also have evolved a behavioral immune system to remove them. Exposures to neonicotinoids, however, can cause significant behavioral effects because these compounds alter the central role of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor in insect brains. In this study, we assessed the effects of three neonicotinoids that have a high toxicity to bees—imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and clothianidin—on the behavioral immune system of honey bees. We used A. mellifera and the endoparasitic mite Acarapis woodi as a behavioral immune system model because A. mellifera can effectively remove the mite by autogrooming. Our results did not demonstrate an effect of neonicotinoid application on whether bees show autogrooming or on mite removal, but the time to initial autogrooming became shorter and the number of autogrooming attempts increased. As opposed to previous studies, our findings indicate that the honey bee response to parasitic mites becomes more sensitive after exposure to neonicotinoids.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, YS, upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Fumi Konno of the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) for collecting experimental data; to Mio Nishiyama of NIES and Yoshio Suzuki, Chizuko Yoshida, Akira Kawada, and Jun Arai of the Kawakami Farm Co., Ltd. for their assistance in preparing experiments; and to Kunihiko Numajiri in Tsukuba City for helping to provide bee samples.
Author contributions
Conceptualization, YS; Methodology, YS and KG; Investigation, YS, TM, and MY; Statistics, YS; Writing-Original Draft, YS; Writing-Review and Editing, YS, TM, MY, and KG; Funding Acquisition: YS
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This study was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research 26290074 and 20H00425 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
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Sakamoto, Y., Yoshiyama, M., Maeda, T. et al. Effects of neonicotinoids on honey bee autogrooming behavior against the tracheal mite Acarapis woodi. Ecotoxicology 31, 251–258 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-021-02503-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-021-02503-5