(150a) Microparticles to Detoxify Neonicotinoid Insecticides in Managed Pollinators

Bees play an important role in agriculture and are contributors to approximately one-third of the food we consume. A multitude of parasites, viruses, and pesticides have been shown to weaken bee health and contribute to Colony Collapse Disorder, which provides motivation for the development of biomaterial strategies that could address these problems and offer solutions that are both economically and environmentally feasible. Neonicotinoids are one of the most widely used class of insecticides and are able to leach into groundwater and subsequently enter pollen and nectar that are foraged by bees. They also preferentially bind insect receptors, making them more harmful to non-target insects. Many studies have reported both sublethal and lethal effects of neonicotinoids on both bumblebees and honeybees. Impairments of learning and behavioral activities, such as flight and memory, are examples of these sublethal effects. Neonicotinoids have also been shown to induce oxidative stress which can result in consequences such as mitochondrial damage and shortened lifespan. The objective of this project is to develop a detoxification strategy to combat neonicotinoid exposure in bees, thereby lessening or eliminating their toxicity and sublethal effects. Polymeric microparticles (MPs) that adsorb pesticides via hydrogen-bonding interactions have been shown in the literature to have the ability to capture neonicotinoids from various fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural samples. In this work, this approach was applied with the expectation that they will adsorb neonicotinoids and lower free concentrations of these harmful insecticides in vivo. Methacrylic acid and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate were used as the functional monomer to facilitate adsorption and crosslinker, respectively, along with a facile precipitation polymerization synthetic approach. We have shown that these MPs can improve the survival of bumblebees after exposure to high levels of imidacloprid, one of the most widely used neonicotinoids. We also confirmed that bumblebees are able to consume the MPs, and these MPs are then able to travel through the digestive tract. MP clearance is important due to not wanting MPs with adsorbed pesticides to reside in bees indefinitely. This work is significant due to it being the first instance of using a biomaterial strategy to tackle neonicotinoid exposure in bees and offers a clear starting point and proof of concept for further research in bee health and protection from neonicotinoid pesticides. Current work is focused on assessing the efficacy of the MPs to combat sublethal effects, confirming the adsorption mechanism in vivo using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, and improving microparticle selectivity through the use of techniques such as molecular imprinting.