Objectives

• Evaluate how direct exposure to toxic cyanobacteria affects bee health.
• To evaluate how exposure to toxic cyanobacteria through foraging in water affects bee health and pollination efficiency under different climatic conditions.
• Investigate how toxic cyanobacterial blooms affect bee health and pollination efficiency in real landscapes.

General activities

• Development of exposure tests and toxicokinetic analysis.
• Foraging experiments under heat stress conditions and climatic experiment in semi-field.
• Landscape pollination study.

Expected results

• Know how and at what environmentally relevant concentrations found in nature, bees are vulnerable to cyanotoxins when ingested orally or by topical contact with them.
• Define the levels of risk of cyanotoxins to bee health for further studies with increasing environmental complexity.
• Decipher the fate and bioaccumulation of toxins in each of the three bee species tested.
• The bioaccumulation potential of the different toxins will allow the optimization of toxin exposure monitoring procedures in subsequent semi-field and field studies.
• Critical knowledge on how temperature fluctuations due to daily and seasonal changes in weather conditions affect cyanotoxin exposure.
• The potential threat posed by toxic cyanobacterial blooms to bees and their pollination efficiency under natural conditions.

Grant 2022-T1/AMB-24063 funded by: