| Scope and method of study. The goal of this study was to test the efficacy of using existing learning principles in the realm of predictive risk assessment for pesticide toxicology. The European honey bee was used as an indicator organism to test the effects of sublethal insecticide doses on learning task performance. Two experiments were performed to evaluate associative and nonassociative performance. Experiment 1 used a repeated measures Analysis of Variance, simple-effects tests, and Scheffe comparisons. Experiment 2 used the Analysis of Variance, and Scheffe comparisons. For Experiment 1, probability of response was the dependent measure, while in Experiment 2, trials-to-criterion was the dependent variable.;Findings and conclusions. None of the reduced sublethal doses in either experiment proved to be safe for honey bees in terms of learning performance. In all cases, insecticide-treated groups performed at a lower rate than their controls. Recommendations include using behavioral measures to fill in large gaps in hazard assessment methodology, currently mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Additionally, other phylogenetic order-specific species should be placed under insecticide-induced behavioral tests as well. The commercial insecticide methoxychlor, while deemed relatively safe to honey bees in terms of mortality estimates, was shown in this study to significantly impact behaviors important for feeding, pollinating and ultimately, survival. |
