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Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Poster: P-IE, Pollinator Biology and Ecology

D3486: Interactive effects of temporal food stress and chronic neonicotinoid exposure on bumblebee microcolonies

Tuesday, November 11, 2025
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM Pacific
Location: Exhibit Hall A-A1, OCC
Poster Display
Pollinator populations are declining globally due to multiple interacting stressors, including poor nutrition, pesticide exposure, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and emerging pathogens and parasites. These stressors may act synergistically, producing combined effects more harmful than each alone. Despite growing concern, few studies have examined how poor nutrition and pesticide exposure interact to affect bumblebee health. Understanding how the timing of floral resource abundance shapes resilience to chemical stressors is critical for supporting pollinator populations in increasingly disturbed and agricultural landscapes. This project investigates the interactive effects of diet and chronic pesticide exposure on bumblebee health and detoxification responses. In a controlled laboratory experiment, microcolonies of the common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) were subjected to dietary and pesticide treatments to test how variation in food abundance and timing modulates vulnerability to sublethal, field-relevant doses of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid. We present preliminary results on survival, colony mass, brood development, behavior, and expression of detoxification genes in bumblebee microcolonies under temporal food stress and neonicotinoid exposure. This work complements others that identify nutritional strategies to enhance pesticide resilience and inform pollinator-focused restoration efforts in post-agricultural landscapes.