Impacts of neonicotinoids on the bumble bees Bombus terrestris and Bombus impatiens examined through the lens of an adverse outcome pathway framework
Bumble bees (Bombus sp) are important pollinators for agricultural systems and natural landscapes and have faced population declines globally in recent decades. Neonicotinoid pesticides have been implicated in the population reductions in bumble bees, and other pollinators, due to their widespread use, specificity to the invertebrate nervous system, and toxicity to bees. Adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) are used to describe the mechanism of action of a toxicant through sequential levels of biological organization to understand the key events that occur for a given adverse outcome. Here, we used the The AOP framework was used here to organize and present the current literature available for the impacts of neonicotinoids on bumble bees. This review focusesd on Bombus terrestris and B. impatiens, the two most commonly studied bumble bees due to their commercial availability. The present review does not seek to describe an AOP for the molecular initiating event shared by neonicotinoids, but rather aims to summarize the present literature and highlight data gaps for the Bombus research community to address.