English

More than 585,000 people took part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch. The survey took place over a January weekend, as it has for the past 36 years. The number of amateur scientists was almost 100,000 more than last year, falling just short of the record participation in 2011. Citizen science allows scientists to tap the vast resources of an interested and passionate public by asking them to act as observers of nature. Dr Daniel Hayhow, a scientist at the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, said the numbers of people taking the time to join the bird watch was “really exciting and the dataset that we have is a real goldmine”. Nature commentator and former RSPB conservation director Mark Avery said the turn out for birds showed how passionate the British public are about their feathered fauna. “More people counted birds in their gardens than are members of all the political parties altogether. That ought to be a lesson to them coming up to the general election,” he said. Unfortunately, the results of the bird watch struck a less positive note. Some of Britain’s most taken-for-granted birds are on a precipitous decline. House sparrows, which have declined 58% since the survey began in 1979, and starlings (down 80%) continue to worry scientists.

Earlier last week a neonicotinoid scandal broke in the media. Here are two examples of the coverage this scandal received, from the Guardian and Nature. The story is that Government’s environment department, Defra, knew that there were correlations between neonicotinoids and bumblebee health in the data from a key study that they had commissioned from the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera), but despite this they allowed Fera to ignore and massage the data to remove the correlations, then produced a Defra policy paper that supported the previously expressed position of the Owen Paterson’s department.

More and more pollinating bird and mammal species are moving towards extinction, raising concerns over the billion dollar eco-services they provide, says a new IUCN study. On average, 2.4 bird and mammal pollinator species per year have moved on the IUCN Red List category towards extinction in recent decades. During the period 1988 to 2012, 18 pollinator bird species qualified for being "up-listed" to a higher threat category while none qualified for a down-listing. Between 1996 and 2008, 13 mammal species identified as pollinators were up-listed to a higher threat category and two species qualified for down-listing to a lower category of threat. The study, Global Trends in the Status of Bird and Mammal Pollinators, was produced in collaboration by the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Sapienza University of Rome and BirdLife International. It is published online in the journal Conservation Letters.

Here we show that bumblebees (Bombus terrestris audax) fed field levels [10 nM, 2.1 ppb (w/w)] of neonicotinoid accumulate between 4 and 10 nM in their brains within 3 days. Acute (minutes) exposure of cultured neurons to 10 nM clothianidin, but not imidacloprid, causes a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor-dependent rapid mitochondrial depolarization. However, a chronic (2 days) exposure to 1 nM imidacloprid leads to a receptor-dependent increased sensitivity to a normally innocuous level of acetylcholine, which now also causes rapid mitochondrial depolarization in neurons. Finally, colonies exposed to this level of imidacloprid show deficits in colony growth and nest condition compared with untreated colonies. These findings provide a mechanistic explanation for the poor navigation and foraging observed in neonicotinoid treated bumblebee colonies.

The objective of this study was to assess whether changes in the structure of the soil microbial community after imidacloprid application at the field rate (FR, 1 mg/kg soil) and 10 times the FR (10 × FR, 10 mg/kg soil) may also have an impact on biochemical and microbial soil functioning. The obtained data showed a negative effect by imidacloprid applied at the FR dosage for substrate-induced respiration (SIR), the number of total bacteria, dehydrogenase (DHA), both phosphatases (PHOS-H and PHOS-OH), and urease (URE) at the beginning of the experiment. In 10 × FR treated soil, decreased activity of SIR, DHA, PHOS-OH and PHOS-H was observed over the experimental period. Nitrifying and N2-fixing bacteria were the most sensitive to imidacloprid. The concentration of NO3− decreased in both imidacloprid-treated soils, whereas the concentration of NH4+ in soil with 10 × FR was higher than in the control. Analysis of the bacterial growth strategy revealed that imidacloprid affected the r- or K-type bacterial classes as indicated also by the decreased eco-physiological (EP) index. Imidacloprid affected the physiological state of culturable bacteria and caused a reduction in the rate of colony formation as well as a prolonged time for growth. Principal component analysis showed that imidacloprid application significantly shifted the measured parameters, and the application of imidacloprid may pose a potential risk to the biochemical and microbial activity of soils.

experimental exposure to imidacloprid treated seeds was performed on red-legged partridges (Alectoris rufa) (n=15 pairs per treatment group: control, 20% or 100% of the recommended application rate) during two periods that corresponded to the autumn (duration of exposure: 25 days) and late winter (10 days) cereal sowing times in Spanish farmlands. We studied effects on the survival, body condition, oxidative stress biomarkers, plasma biochemistry, carotenoid-based coloration, T-cell mediated immune response and reproduction of exposed adult partridges, and on the survival and T-cell immune response of their chicks. The high dose (recommended application rate) killed all partridges, with mortality occurring faster in females than in males. The low dose (20% the recommended application rate) had no effect on mortality, but reduced levels of plasma biochemistry parameters (glucose, magnesium and lactate dehydrogenase), increased blood superoxide dismutase activity, produced changes in carotenoid-based integument coloration, reduced the clutch size, delayed the first egg lay date, increased egg yolk vitamins and carotenoids and depressed T-cell immune response of chicks. Moreover, the analysis of the livers of dead partridges revealed an accumulation of imidacloprid during exposure time. Despite the moratorium on the use of neonicotinoids in the European Union, birds may still be at high risk of poisoning by these pesticides through direct sources of exposure to coated seeds in autumn and winter.

A judge has ruled on Wednesday that the environmental association BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany) has a right to voice concerns over potential harms to bees from a neonicotinoid pesticide, Thiacloprid. The judge at the Duesseldorf Regional Court revoked a previous injunction in favour of BAYER CropScience. Thiacloprid is used on crops such as oilseed rape and apples and is sold to the public in garden bug-killing products. According to BUND, there is scientific evidence that the substance can make bees more likely to die from common diseases and can impair their navigational abilities. By printing a "not toxic to bees" logo on products containing Thiacloprid there arose "the suspicion of a deliberate deception of the consumer by BAYER." Friends of the Earth is now asking the European Commission to take a precautionary approach by suspending all uses of Thiacloprid and to review its safety. A scientific paper by Professor Randolf Menzel used in evidence by BUND, says: “Sublethal doses of neonicotinoids interfere selectively with the homing flight component based on this cognitive map memory, reducing the probability of successful returns to the hive. Chronic exposure to the neonicotinoid Thiacloprid reduces the attractiveness of a feeding site and the rate of recruitment." Findings by toxicologist Dr. Henk Tennekes suggest that bees are not the only victims: “The risks of the neonicotinoid insecticides Imidacloprid and Thiacloprid to arthropods in water and soil may be seriously underestimated. The acceptable limits are based mainly on short-term tests. If long-term studies were to be carried out, far lower concentrations may turn out to be hazardous. This explains why minute quantities of Imidacloprid may induce bee decline in the long run.”

In a Belgian pilot study, honey bee wax combs from ten hives were analyzed on the presence of almost 300 organochlorine and organophosphorous compounds by LC–MS/MS and GC–MS/MS. Traces of 18 pesticides were found and not a single sample was free of pesticide residues. The number of residues found per sample ranged from 3 to 13, and the pesticides found could be categorized as (1) pesticides for solely apicultural (veterinary) application, (2) pesticides for solely agricultural (crop protection) application, (3) pesticides for mixed agricultural and apicultural (veterinary) application. The frequencies and quantities of some environmental pollutants bear us high concerns. Most alarming was the detection of lindane (gamma-HCH) and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) (including its breakdown product dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene), two insecticides that are banned in Europe. The present comprehensive residue analysis, however, also reveals residues of pesticides never found in beeswax before, i.e. DEET, propargite and bromophos.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard extended an invitation to Dutch toxicologist Henk Tennekes to participate in the workshop, “Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) & Neonics: Can we reverse the trend of losing honeybees?” The workshop was held on the Radcliffe Institute campus in Cambridge, MA. It began on the morning of Wednesday, February 11 and concluded at noon on Thursday, February 12, 2015. The workshop convened a panel of international and U.S. experts with backgrounds relevant to public health, toxicology, entomology, governmental policy affairs, and commercial beekeeping to discuss the science on the hazards of neonics to bees and other pollinators, and the public policy implication to save bees and other pollinators.