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Survivorship and gut microbial community of Bombus vosnesenskii exposed to an herbicide, a fungicide, an insecticide, or the combination of all three chemicals

dataset
posted on 2025-04-28, 16:00 authored by Anna R. Tatarko, Rachel Vannette, Steven A. Freese, Anne S. Leonard

We investigated site-level differences in survival and microbiome structure of wild bumble bees exposed to multiple pesticides, both individually and in combination. We collected wild Bombus vosnesenskii foragers (N = 175) from an alpine meadow, a valley lake shoreline, and a suburban park and maintained them on a diet containing an herbicide (glyphosate), a fungicide (tebuconazole), an insecticide (imidacloprid), or a combination of these chemicals. The herbicide treatment was 30 ppm of glyphosate (Sigma-Aldrich, USA), the fungicide treatment was 30 ppb of tebuconazole (Sigma-Aldrich, USA), and the insecticide treatment was 30 ppb of imidacloprid (Sigma-Aldrich, USA). These chemicals were selected because they had the highest estimated use for each chemical class (insecticide, herbicide, fungicide) in our region (Washoe county, Nevada, (Wieben 2019)). These concentrations of imidacloprid and tebuconazole approximate the median of those detected in nectar (Zioga et al. 2020). The concentration we chose for glyphosate is within the range of field-realistic exposure from treated plants (Herbert et al. 2014, Thompson et al. 2022, Helander et al. 2023b) although is likely higher than bees would experience foraging from non-target plants (Zioga et al. 2023). We monitored survival daily for 20 days. Every 3 days, we replaced feeders with a clean feeder with 1000 mL of solution. We continued the experiment until bees died or at day 20 (whichever came first) at which point we weighed the bees, measured their intertegular (IT) span to estimate body size (Cane 1987) and dissected out the midgut and hindgut (hereafter ‘gut’) for DNA extractions and 16s sequencing (see below).



Funding

The impacts of multiple agricultural chemicals on the microbial ecology of pollination and implications for wild bumblebee health

National Institute of Food and Agriculture

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History

Data contact name

Tatarko, Anna

Data contact email

atatarko09@gmail.com

Publisher

Ag Data Commons

Intended use

Research

Temporal Extent Start Date

2022-06-21

Temporal Extent End Date

2022-07-05

Frequency

  • continual

Theme

  • Non-geospatial

Geographic Coverage

{ "type": "FeatureCollection", "features": [ { "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -119.919090, 39.301880 ] }, "type": "Feature", "properties": {} }, { "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -119.7724167, 39.2362222 ] }, "type": "Feature", "properties": {} }, { "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -119.8626944, 39.5010000 ] }, "type": "Feature", "properties": {} } ] }

Geographic location - description

Washoe county, Nevada. Sites ranged from 14.58 km – 30.46 km apart and differed in elevation and degree of urbanization. Alpine Meadow (39.3018800°, -119.9190897°, elev: 2611.52, urbanization score: 1.93) Scrubland Shoreline (39.2362222°, -119.7724167°. elev: 1535.58, urbanization score: 0.92) Suburban Park (39.5010000°, -119.8626944°, elev: 1420.06, urbanization score: -2.85).

ISO Topic Category

  • environment
  • biota
  • farming

National Agricultural Library Thesaurus terms

survival rate; intestinal microorganisms; microbial communities; Bombus; microbiome; alpine meadows; lakes; shorelines; diet; glyphosate; tebuconazole; imidacloprid; pesticide application; Nevada; nectar; bees; foraging; body size; midgut; hindgut; DNA; agrochemicals; pollinators

OMB Bureau Code

  • 005:20 - National Institute of Food and Agriculture

Pending citation

  • Yes

Related material without URL

Sequencing data is available on the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) BioProject ID number PRJNA1221307.

Public Access Level

  • Public