ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Fipronil pesticide as a suspect in historical mass mortalities of honey bees.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Allium cepa test vs. insecticides: a scientometric and meta-analytical review.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2022Pooled it
- Comprehensive Quality Assessment of Atractylodis macrocephalae Rhizoma Between Standardized Bases and Retail Market Samples in Pan'an County.ACS omega · 2026Article
- Impact of the pesticide fipronil on honey quality and the survival of Apis mellifera bees.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2026Article
- The Impact of Termiticides on Termite Corpse Management.Insects · 2025Article
- Smartcard: an integrated approach for contaminant monitoring, from field to laboratory.Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry · 2025Article
- Contributions of γ-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) Receptors for the Activities ofPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Immunoassays and Emerging Analytical Techniques of Fipronil and its Metabolites for Food Safety: A Review.Journal of agricultural and food chemistry · 2024Review
- Muscarinic acetylcholine receptor activation synergizes the knockdown and toxicity of GABA-gated chloride channel insecticides.Pest management science · 2022Article
- Sensitivity of the stripe-faced dunnart, Sminthopsis macroura (Gould 1845), to the insecticide, fipronil; implications for pesticide risk assessments in Australia.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2022Article
- Article
- Effects of Menadione on Survival, Feeding, and Tunneling Activity of the Formosan Subterranean Termite.Insects · 2021Article
- The adverse effects of injected functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotube (f-MWCNT) on in vivo neurosecretory brain cells of Jamaican field cricket, Gryllus assimilis.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2021Article
- Effects of Insecticides and Microbiological Contaminants onMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Long-term field-realistic exposure to a next-generation pesticide, flupyradifurone, impairs honey bee behaviour and survival.Communications biology · 2021Article
- Short-term effects of pesticide fipronil on behavioral and physiological endpoints of Daphnia magna.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2021Article
- Heterogeneous expression of GABA receptor-like subunits LCCH3 and GRD reveals functional diversity of GABA receptors in the honeybee Apis mellifera.British journal of pharmacology · 2020Article
- Reprotoxic effects of the systemic insecticide fipronil on the butterflyProceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- A speculative claim of mass mortalities of honeybee colonies caused by fipronil in France is not supported by published field data.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Honeybee dietary neonicotinoid exposure is associated with pollen collection from agricultural weeds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Tracking Pesticide Residues to a Plant Genus Using Palynology in Pollen Trapped from Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) at Ornamental Plant Nurseries.Environmental entomology · 2019Article
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4 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mass mortalities of honey bees occurred in France in the 1990s coincident with the introduction of two agricultural insecticides, imidacloprid and fipronil. Imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, was widely blamed, but the differential potency of imidacloprid and fipronil has been unclear because of uncertainty over their capacity to bioaccumulate during sustained exposure to trace dietary residues and, thereby, cause time-reinforced toxicity (TRT). We experimentally quantified the toxicity of fipronil and imidacloprid to honey bees and incorporated the observed mortality rates into a demographic simulation of a honey bee colony in an environmentally realistic scenario. Additionally, we evaluated two bioassays from new international guidance for agrochemical regulation, which aim to detect TRT. Finally, we used analytical chemistry (GC-MS) to test for bioaccumulation of fipronil. We found in demographic simulations that only fipronil produced mass mortality in honey bees. In the bioassays, only fipronil caused TRT. GC-MS analysis revealed that virtually all of the fipronil ingested by a honey bee in a single meal was present 6 d later, which suggests that bioaccumulation is the basis of TRT in sustained dietary exposures. We therefore postulate that fipronil, not imidacloprid, caused the mass mortalities of honey bees in France during the 1990s because it is lethal to honey bees in even trace doses due to its capacity to bioaccumulate and generate TRT. Our results provide evidence that recently proposed laboratory bioassays can discriminate harmful bioaccumulative substances and, thereby, address evident shortcomings in a regulatory system that had formerly approved fipronil for agricultural use.
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