Can near-infrared exposure help mitigate pesticide-impaired thermoregulation in adult bees?
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Zhu, Tianqi
Graystock, Peter
Gill, Richard
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Exposure to pesticides may place the process of animal thermoregulation at risk, with impacts on organism fitness and function across landscapes. Quantifying such impacts whilst finding mitigative solutions is thus important especially given pesticide applications are forecast to continue across changing thermal landscapes. Here, we expose an important insect pollinator - bumblebees - to a cholinergic pesticide (neonicotinoid) and characterise the impact on adult body temperature. We further investigate how near infrared (NIR; 660 or 850 nm) mediates this pesticide effect using three exposure durations (5, 10 or 20 minutes per hour). Held at 18oC ambient, pesticide only exposed bees exhibited a steep body temperature drop (nearly 8oC) over the 73hr assay (relative to control bees that maintained their body at ~30oC). Promisingly, for pesticide and NIR exposed bees, 660 nm for 5 minutes more than halved the rate of body temperature decrease (relative to pesticide only bees), and intriguingly this counter effect lessened with increased NIR exposure time. Additionally, 850 nm for 20 mins may also alleviate body temperature decline by nearly 40%. Our study reports a mechanism by which pesticides threaten the critical functioning of a non-target organism and provides a potential therapy worthy of further investigation.
Date Issued
2026-07-01
Date Acceptance
2026-06-03
Citation
Royal Society Open Science, 2026, 13 (7)
ISSN
2054-5703
Publisher
The Royal Society
Journal / Book Title
Royal Society Open Science
Volume
13
Issue
7
Copyright Statement
© 2026 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
License URL
Identifier
10.1098/rsos.260148
Subjects
Ecology
Conservation
and Global Change Biology behaviour
ecology neonicotinoid
body temperature
thermal imaging
bumblebee
Bombus terrestris
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
rsos260148
Date Publish Online
2026-07-22