About this Research Topic
Pollinating insects are crucial to agriculture and to maintaining flowering plants biodiversity and ecosystem health. Current research is largely investigating the demonstrated and potential involvements of agrochemicals as a cause of the decline of insect populations. However useful, the focus is on relatively few insect species, is limited to a few substances and often employs standard methods. In contrast, the effects can be diverse and subtle, originating from all levels of the nervous system, and showing pathologies and responses to doses orders of magnitude below the toxicity threshold. Within this research topic, we would like to invite colleagues to submit studies that investigate these sublethal effects from all possible perspectives, including questions such as:
- What species are affected, beyond the target species?
- Which are the potentially harmful substances among insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers, and what are their interactions?
- What concentrations of pesticides and their metabolites accumulate in the insect brain?
- What are detoxification pathways and the corresponding time scales?
- Which direct and indirect target sites in the nervous system are most affected?
- What acute and chronic exposure pathways through plants, air, water, and soils can we identify?
- How do effects correlate between multiple scales of the organism from genetics, molecular and cellular properties, neuronal networks to behavioural outputs?
- To what extent are the single sensory modalities such as olfaction, vision, gustation, hearing, and somatosensory perception affected?
- What are the implications for complex neuronal processes, considering all forms of insect learning, memory, and cognition?
- How are complex behaviours such as locomotion, navigation, and communication and their underlying neural networks affected?
- How do effects in individual subjects influence their social interactions?
- What species are affected, beyond the target species?
- Which are the potentially harmful substances among insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers, and what are their interactions?
- What concentrations of pesticides and their metabolites accumulate in the insect brain?
- What are detoxification pathways and the corresponding time scales?
- Which direct and indirect target sites in the nervous system are most affected?
- What acute and chronic exposure pathways through plants, air, water, and soils can we identify?
- How do effects correlate between multiple scales of the organism from genetics, molecular and cellular properties, neuronal networks to behavioural outputs?
- To what extent are the single sensory modalities such as olfaction, vision, gustation, hearing, and somatosensory perception affected?
- What are the implications for complex neuronal processes, considering all forms of insect learning, memory, and cognition?
- How are complex behaviours such as locomotion, navigation, and communication and their underlying neural networks affected?
- How do effects in individual subjects influence their social interactions?
Keywords: pesticides, insect, brain, toxicity, harmful substances, metabolites
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