English

Dutch researchers have detected a cocktail of 14 different pesticides (fungicides, herbicides, insecticides) in bats. In dead individuals and manure classical insecticides such as DDT and permethrin were found, but the animals were also exposed to the neonicotinoids imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, the herbicides mecoprop and nicosulfuron, and the fungicides iprodione and propiconazole. Pesticides such as imidacloprid, propoxur, thiamethoxam, nicosulfuron and iprodione had not previously been reported to be present in bats.

Since 2014, biologist Jenny Shrum has been working under the guidance of the island marble butterfly team to restore San Juan Island's population of the butterflies, an insect that scientists believed had gone extinct back in 1908, and which is now a candidate species for protection under the Endangered Species Act. There's only one population in the world, and they flutter about the tumble mustards and pepper plants on the island's harsh, windswept, ocean-beaten coastal prairie.

New figures have emerged in a report by conservationists and nature experts which shows that wildlife in Staffordshire is declining at a rapid rate. The report is the first so-called 'stocktake' of animals and wildlife county-wide. The report by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust assessed species across farmland, freshwater, grassland, wetland, moorland, woodland, and low-land heathland. The figures showed that many species are in decline, from small rodents to insects. These include the hazel dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius), water vole, and numerous butterfly species.

ABOUT 1.4 billion jobs and three-quarters of all crops depend on pollinators, researchers said this week, warning of a dire threat to human welfare if the falls in bee and butterfly numbers are not halted. “World food supplies and jobs are at risk unless urgent action is taken to stop global declines of pollinators,” said a statement from the University of Reading, whose researchers took part in the global review.

A nationwide hunt has begun to save a rare native New Zealand butterfly with no close relatives.The hunt is the first step in a long term project headed by Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust to improve the native forest ringlet butterflys' (Aphantopus hyperantus) bleak future. Steve Wheatley, a senior conservation specialist from Butterfly Conservation in England, has been brought halfway across the world to tour New Zealand gathering records about past and present locations of the butterfly.

When a team of researchers travelled around Ghana to conduct a Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus) census, they encountered a very pronounced generation gap. “The older people we surveyed remember the Grey Parrot well”, says Stuart Marsden, Professor of Conservation Ecology at Manchester Metropolitan University, and one of the leaders of the study. “The species used to roost in large trees in their thousands. They remember them being common sights around the villages, as pests who would eat their fruit.

Neonicotinoids are present in streams and waterways throughout southern Ontario. In a paper that will soon be published in the journal Chemosphere, Environment Canada scientists found that regions of the province with intensive vegetable, fruit and grape production have waterways with the highest concentrations of neonicotinoids. “At two sites in southwestern Ontario, the Canadian federal freshwater guideline value for imidacloprid (230 nanograms/litre) was exceeded in roughly 75 percent of the (water) samples collected,” the report said.

Neonicotinoids—the most widely used class of insecticides—significantly reduce populations of predatory insects when used as seed coatings, according to researchers at Penn State. The team's research challenges the previously held belief that neonicotinoid seed coatings have little to no effect on predatory insect populations. In fact, the work suggests that neonicotinoids reduce populations of insect predators as much as broadcast applications of commonly used pyrethroid insecticides.

In a recent study, Andre Gilburn from the University of Stirling, UK, and colleagues used volunteer observations made between 1984 and 2012 to find statistically significant correlations between butterfly population trends and environmental factors, including temperatures and neonicotinoid use. Out of the 17 species investigated, the researchers identified 15 that appeared to decline in line with the use of neonicotinoid pesticides (Peer J. (2015) 3, e1402, http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1402).

Massive amounts of observation data recorded by amateurs are available for butterflies, allowing scientists to study their population dynamics and response to environmental threats. They report serious declines in many rarer species leading to an overall loss in biodiversity. As these declines reflect the impacts of land use change, climate change and pesticide use, they also provide an alarm system to warn of imminent dangers to other, less visible parts of our natural environment. Michael Gross reports.