STRESSBEE

Bees and other pollinating insects are experiencing important declines worldwide, with potential consequences on pollination services to wild plants and agricultural crops. The factors underlying these declines are various, including pesticide exposure, nutritional stress, climate change, and pathogens and parasites. Importantly, these factors act in combination, and may interact synergistically. Also importantly, many of the effects of these factors are sub-lethal, thus hindering the evaluation of the relative contribution of each stressor and, consequently, the implementation of appropriate correcting measures.

Objective

Our objective is to understand how different stressors interact with one another to affect bee health and reproductive output.

Actions

In this project, we will conduct a series of laboratory and field experiments in which solitary bees (Osmia) will be exposed to pesticides, alone and in combination with three other stress factors: global warming, nutritional stress and parasite pressure. Our objective is to understand how different stressors interact with one another to affect bee health and reproductive output. These experiments will generate populations exposed to various stressors and combinations of stressors. We will use these populations to identify molecular (tanscriptomic) biomarkers associated with different stressors.

Our ultimate goal is to contribute to the development of a biomarker-based diagnostic platform that could serve as a tool for rapid screening and assessment of health in bee populations.

Proyecto PID2021-128938OB-I00 financiado por MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033/ y por FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa