【Animal Modeling】-Study reveals that chlorothalonil affects the survival and gut microbial diversity of bee larvae

  Recently, a research team from the Institute of Honey Bee Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences found that high exposure doses of the fungicide chlorothalonil reduced the survival rate of indoor artificially reared bee larvae, changed the intestinal microbial structure of bee larvae, and the risks of pesticides to bees at the same time. related to its toxicity and exposure dose.

  Chlorothalonil is a non-systemic organochlorine fungicide with low toxicity to adult honeybees. Pollen is an important food source for bee larvae. Whether larvae affect their health by eating pollen containing chlorothalonil residues, the risk of low toxicity and high exposure doses of pesticides to bee larvae has not been comprehensively studied.

  The study firstly determined the chronic toxicity of chlorothalonil to honeybee larvae. Under laboratory conditions, 3-6 day old honeybee larvae were continuously fed diets containing different concentrations of chlorothalonil, with a no observable adverse effect concentration (NOAEC) of 1 microgram. /ml. Then, 16S rDNA gene sequencing technology was used to analyze the effect of different concentrations of chlorothalonil exposure on the structure of honeybee gut microbiota, and it was found that there were differences in the abundance of Pseudomonadales and Burkholderiales among treatments. Finally, the risk assessment was carried out based on the residual literature value of chlorothalonil in pollen. The risk value (RQ) of chlorothalonil was dynamically correlated with NOAEC and exposure dose.