The Impact of a Pesticide Ban on a Pollinator Community

农药禁令对传粉昆虫群落的影响

• 批准号: NE/Y000102/1
• 负责人: Jane Memmott
• 金额: $ 93.06万
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FY000102%2F1
• 关键词: Impact; Pesticide; Ban; Pollinator; Community

THE IMPORTANT ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE BEING ADDRESSED: Pollinators provide a crop pollination service worth £174 to £346 billion each year and 90% of flowering plants depend on animal-mediated pollinator services. While the impact of pesticides on this service is a cause of significant concern worldwide, most research on this topic has been limited in scope and environmental realism, with the majority of studies limited to a single pollinator species under laboratory conditions. Studies which used field trials to test pesticide impacts remain very rare, use very small numbers of pollinator species (e.g. n=3) and are limited to the scale of crop fields, which are generally the largest units of area that can feasibly be manipulated (e.g., Woodcock et al. 2017 doi: 10.1126/science.aaa1190 & Rundlof et al. 2015 doi:10.1038/nature14420). However, in Guernsey - an island undergoing a pesticide ban - we have a unique one-off opportunity to test the impact of pesticides on a whole pollinator community at the scale of an entire ecological system. Moreover, we have replicate islands nearby to use as controls and we have already collected a considerable quantity of baseline data on pollinator population density and community structure prior to the ban.THE AIM OF OUR GRANT APPLICATION is to quantify the impact of a pesticide ban on a pollinator community and test for cascading impacts on the wider food web. The ban is being implemented on the island of Guernsey, and we will use three neighbouring islands (Jersey, Alderney and Sark) as controls. Using a small grant along with logistical support provided by a local NGO, we have collected a substantial 4-year baseline dataset. If our research proposal is funded, we will have a unique seven-year run of continuous data covering the period before, during and after the pesticide ban on Guernsey and our control islands.THERE ARE FOUR OBJECTIVES TO OUR PROJECT. First, we will quantify the impact of the pesticide ban on populations of the buff tailed bumblebee, five species of hoverfly and two species of moth, predicting increases in all these indicator species following the ban. Second, we will quantify the impact of the ban on pollinator community structure, predicting a greater rebound in pollinator groups which are known to be particularly sensitive to pesticides. Third, we will test for cascading positive benefits of the ban on the wider community associated with pollinators, specifically their specialist parasitoids and generalist bat predators. Finally, we will use our results and management recommendations to inform and facilitate impact at a local, national, and international level. METHODS: Our field sites are four islands in the Channel Island archipelago - Guernsey and three adjacent control islands - which are close to the French coastline and made up of two self-governing British Crown Dependencies. We will use a Before-After-Controlled-Impact design to sample pollinators, which combines multiple control and reference sites with multi-year sampling before and after the pesticide ban. This allows us to distinguish the impact of the ban from other variables which are well known to affect insect populations, most obviously the weather. Indeed, our baseline data shows we can detect an increase in pollinator abundance as small as 10%, which is a game changer in this field of research. SUMMARY: Overall, the combination of our rigorous sampling protocols, our unique island system, and the fact that we have the pre-ban data "in the bag", will enable us to advance the frontiers of knowledge on the impact of pesticides on pollinators at an unmatched scale. Our innovative community level approach has not been attempted before and will lead to ground-breaking scientific discovery. Although it is complex and high-risk to detect changes in ecological communities at such scale, our baseline data demonstrates that our approach is eminently feasible.

授粉者每年提供价值1740亿至3460亿英镑的作物授粉服务，90%的开花植物依赖于动物介导的授粉者服务。虽然农药对这一服务的影响在全世界引起了重大关注，但关于这一主题的大多数研究在范围和环境现实方面都受到限制，大多数研究仅限于实验室条件下的单一传粉物种。使用田间试验来测试农药影响的研究仍然非常罕见，使用的授粉物种数量非常少（例如n=3），并且仅限于农田规模，农田通常是可以实际操作的最大面积单位（例如，Woodcock等人2017 doi：10.1126/science.aaa1190 & Rundlof等人2015 doi：10.1038/nature 14420）。然而，在根西岛-一个正在禁止使用杀虫剂的岛屿-我们有一个独特的一次性机会，可以在整个生态系统的规模上测试杀虫剂对整个传粉者群落的影响。此外，我们已经复制了附近的岛屿作为对照，我们已经收集了相当数量的基线数据，传粉昆虫种群密度和社区结构之前的禁令。我们的赠款申请的目的是量化农药禁令对传粉昆虫社区的影响，并测试对更广泛的食物网的级联影响。这项禁令正在根西岛执行，我们将使用三个邻近岛屿（泽西岛、奥尔德尼岛和萨克岛）作为控制。利用当地非政府组织提供的少量赠款沿着后勤支持，我们收集了大量的4年基线数据集。如果我们的研究提案得到资助，我们将有一个独特的连续七年运行的数据，涵盖之前，期间和之后的农药禁令对根西岛和我们的控制岛屿。首先，我们将量化农药禁令对黄尾熊蜂、五种食蚜蝇和两种蛾种群的影响，预测禁令实施后所有这些指标物种的增加。其次，我们将量化禁令对传粉者群落结构的影响，预测已知对农药特别敏感的传粉者群体将出现更大的反弹。第三，我们将测试禁令对与传粉者相关的更广泛社区的级联积极效益，特别是它们的专业寄生虫和多面手蝙蝠捕食者。最后，我们将利用我们的结果和管理建议，在地方，国家和国际层面上提供信息和促进影响。方法：我们的实地考察地点是海峡群岛中的四个岛屿-根西岛和三个邻近的控制岛屿-这些岛屿靠近法国海岸线，由两个自治的英国皇家属地组成。我们将使用一个前后控制影响的设计来采样传粉者，它结合了多个控制和参考网站与农药禁令之前和之后的多年采样。这使我们能够区分禁令的影响与其他众所周知的影响昆虫种群的变量，最明显的是天气。事实上，我们的基线数据显示，我们可以检测到传粉者丰度增加了10%，这是这一研究领域的游戏规则改变者。 总结：总的来说，我们严格的采样协议，我们独特的岛屿系统，以及我们拥有禁令前数据的事实相结合，将使我们能够以无与伦比的规模推进农药对传粉者影响的知识前沿。我们创新的社区层面的方法以前从未尝试过，并将导致突破性的科学发现。虽然在这样的规模上检测生态群落的变化是复杂和高风险的，但我们的基线数据表明，我们的方法是非常可行的。