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A team of researchers created the first national study to map U.S. wild bees. What they found confirms that our native buzzing pollinators are disappearing from many of the country's most vital farmlands, from California's Central Valley and the Midwest corn belt to the Mississippi River valley."If losses of these crucial pollinators continue, the new nationwide assessment indicates that farmers will face increasing costs – and that the problem may even destabilize the nation's crop production," notes the study, the findings of which were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Breeding birds in the Wadden Sea do not raise enough offspring to keep the population in a healthy condition. This is the conclusion of a review published today by the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat and the Joint Monitoring Breeding Bird Group (JMBB). The report conducted an analysis of the breeding success among birds in the Wadden Sea over the years 2009–2012. It found that especially typical Wadden Sea bird species, like the oystercatcher, the avocet and the arctic tern, were hardly able to raise any young. The black-headed gull, the lesser black-backed gull, the herring gull and the common tern also showed poor breeding results at many breeding sites across the Wadden Sea. These results apply to the international Wadden Sea, in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, but correspond to previous results from a long-term monitoring project in the Dutch Wadden Sea, which also showed that low breeding success was an important driver for the decline of most breeding bird species. “The number of birds of several species in the Wadden Sea has continuously declined over the past 20 years. A report published in June 2015 revealed that 15 out of 26 breeding bird species showed a negative trend. This does not mean that adult birds have a higher mortality rate. We now know that poor breeding success is the main factor that explains the decline,” says Gerold Lüerßen of the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat (CWSS), who coordinates the Trilateral Monitoring Migratory and Breeding Bird Group.

Forty years ago, swallows were a common sight in the summer, darting between the beams of old barns or swooping low over the waters of a creek. These swift aerial acrobats seemed to be everywhere -- perched on telephone lines by the dozen awaiting the fall migration, or whirling and diving around old wooden bridges in pursuit of airborne insects. Now, these birds have seemingly disappeared from midair, entirely abandoning large swathes of their former Canadian range. Some, like the bank swallow, have seen their numbers plummet by 98 per cent since 1970. They've become the centre of one of Canada's greatest biological mysteries, and scientists are scrambling to discover why. The swallows' disappearance is part of a larger trend affecting birds known as aerial insectivores, which spend much of their lives on the wing in a constant search for airborne insects to dine on. This group, which includes chimney swifts, purple martins, and whippoorwills, has plunged by 70 per cent in population in Canada, according to a 2012 report by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative. Many birds in this category are now listed as threatened in Canada.

THE neonicotinoid insecticide family, a product thought to be behind the collapse of bee populations, will be banned in France from September, 2018. MPs voted through an amendment banning the insecticide as part of a debate on the law for the reclamation of biodiversity. The original amendment had sought to ban the products at the start of January 2017, but after discussions among MPs who raised concerns about the impact on farmers, a delay of 18 months was granted as a compromise. Furthermore the bill gives the environment ministry the power to issue further bans on similar substitute products, on the advice of health body the Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire (Anses). “We have reversed the mechanics: the ban on neonicotinoids has become the rule and their use the exception,” said MP and former ecology minister Delphine Batho. The measure must still be confirmed by the Senate in a debate likely to be held before the summer. The ban includes the use of seeds treated with the chemical.

Butterfly experts are calling on Britain’s gardeners to help slow the decline in numbers of the country’s most common butterflies. According to wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation, 44 out of the country’s 58 butterfly species have seen a drop in their populations, leaving some species at risk of extinction in the U.K. Common butterflies of the general countryside as well as specialist butterflies that require particular habitats have declined. The charity launched a Garden Butterfly Survey at the beginning of March, asking participants to count the number of butterflies they observe each month, in a bid to raise awareness and monitor butterfly populations. Richard Fox, head of recording at Butterfly Conservation, tells Newsweek that the dramatic decrease in the number of garden butterflies is “severe and statistically significant.”

Exposure to even small amounts of pesticides is preventing bumblebees from efficiently extracting pollen from their favourite wildflowers, says a new study, raising concerns that the chemicals are impairing the insects' ability to learn.
And scientists warn that could affect the ability of the bees to pollinate both crops and wild plants, which can ultimately harm the food supply. The findings, contained in a study co-authored in Canada and the U.K., show that bumblebees exposed to a realistic level of a neonicotinoid insecticide called thiamethoxam, collected more pollen, but took longer to do so than control bees. The study, published Monday in Functional Ecology, found that low exposure to the crop chemical can hinder the ability of bumblebees to develop the skills they need to collect nectar and pollen. While several studies have been conducted on the effects of pesticides on the honeybee population, these findings are the first to explore how the chemicals may affect the ability of bumblebees to forage from common wildflowers. The pesticides confuse the insects, changing their foraging behaviour and floral preferences and hindering the development of the skills needed to extract nectar and pollen, says University of Guelph professor and senior author Nigel Raine.

One year ago, an agency of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) declared that glyphosate (or Roundup), the world’s most widely used herbicide, probably causes cancer. Then, in the fall, the European Food Safety Agency’s (EFSA) responded with an assessment that disagreed with the WHO’s findings. In response, 94 scientists came out in support of the IARC’s original findings. This week, the group—which includes scientists from around the world—released their article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health saying: The most appropriate and scientifically based evaluation of the cancers reported in humans and laboratory animals as well as supportive mechanistic data is that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. On the basis of this conclusion and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to conclude that glyphosate formulations should also be considered likely human carcinogens. And their endorsement is no small matter. In fact, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reassesses the safety of glyphosate, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to begin testing food for its residue, this volley has important implications.

A latency period preceding neurotoxicity is a common characteristic in the dose-response relationship induced by organic mercury. Latency periods have typically been observed with genotoxicants in carcinogenesis, with cancer being manifested a long time after the initiating event. These observations indicate that even a very small dose may cause extensive adverse effects later in life, so the toxicity of the genotoxic compound is dose and time-dependent. In children, methylmercury exposure during pregnancy (in utero) has been associated with delays in reaching developmental milestones (e.g., age at first walking) and decreases in intelligence, increasing in severity with increasing exposure. Ethylmercury exposure from thimerosal in some vaccines has been associated, in some studies, with autism and other neurological disorders in children. In this paper, we have examined whether dose-response data from in vitro and in vivo organic mercury toxicity studies fit the Druckrey-Küpfmüller equation c·tn = constant (c = exposure concentration, t = latency period), first established for genotoxic carcinogens, and whether or not irreversible effects are enhanced by time of exposure (n≥ 1), or else toxic effects are dose-dependent while time has only minor influence on the adverse outcome (n < 1). The mode of action underlying time-dependent toxicity is irreversible binding to critical receptors causing adverse and cumulative effects. The results indicate that the Druckrey-Küpfmüller equation describes well the dose-response characteristics of organic mercury induced neurotoxic effects. This amounts to a paradigm shift in chemical risk assessment of mercurial compounds and highlights that it is vital to perform toxicity testing geared to investigate time-dependent effects.