Lunch seminar with Julia Osterman, researcher at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
Brief summary
Global agriculture depends on pesticides to control crop pests, but this can have unintended environmental consequences for insect pollinators and the services they provide. Pollinators are a diverse group that differ tremendously in their life-history traits. Honeybees (Apis mellifera) have been used as a surrogate for all pollinators in pesticide risk assessment. In this talk, I will present evidence of differences in bee species in their sensitivity to pesticides. As a consequence of these differences, various steps have been initiated to include non-Apis bees in the risk assessment. Yet, these come with challenges, which I will demonstrate using an example from my research in which we try to rear and use Osmia brevicornis for laboratory and semi-field experiments. In addition, other pollinating groups such as hoverflies and butterflies are still widely ignored despite them being possibly more sensitive than bees.
In the new EU project WildPosh, we use these for the first time in laboratory studies. Also, I will shortly discuss if using equivalence testing, which is suggested by EFSA, as a statistical method, can be a tool to prove pesticides are safe. By reforming the pesticide approval process, reducing pesticide use, and finding mitigation measures, with science and policy working closely together, we can better protect pollinators and the services they provide. Finally, I will give an outlook into my new project funded by FORMAS, in which I will investigate the role of protected areas for pollinator conservation in Sweden.