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A new study from the University of Texas at Austin suggests that bees exposed to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, lose some of the beneficial bacteria present in their intestines and are more susceptible to infections and death.
Vivian Abagiu / College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin
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Vivian Abagiu / College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin
A new study from the University of Texas at Austin suggests that bees exposed to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, lose some of the beneficial bacteria present in their intestines and are more susceptible to infections and death.
Vivian Abagiu / College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin
The controversial Roundup herbicide has been accused of causing cancer in humans and Texas scientists now claim that the most popular weed killer in the world could be partly responsible for the destruction of bee populations across the globe. world.
A new study conducted by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin says that glyphosate – the active ingredient in the herbicide – destroys the specialized intestinal bacteria of bees, making them more vulnerable to disease. Infection and death by harmful bacteria.
Researchers Nancy Moran, Erick Motta and Kasie Raymann suggest that their results demonstrate that glyphosate could contribute to the imbalance of colonies, a phenomenon that has been wreaking havoc on bees and native bees for more than a decade.
They hope their findings will convince farmers, landscapers and homeowners to stop spraying glyphosate herbicides on flowering plants likely to be pollinated by bees.
"We need better guidelines for the use of glyphosate, especially with regard to bee exposure, because currently, the guidelines assume that herbicides do not harm bees," Motta said. "Our study shows that this is not true."
The company owning Roundup disputes the results published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.
"No large-scale study has ever found a link between glyphosate and bee health problems," Bayer said in a statement, adding that the new study "does not change that."
In June, the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer bought the giant of agriculture Monsanto, the company that developed Roundup.
Bayer noted that the study was based on a small sample of individual bees and that it did not meet the regulatory pesticide research criteria stipulated by the international guidelines developed by the Bayer Organization. economic cooperation and development and other international organizations.
In addition, the company suggested that it was "doubtful that open-pit bee populations could absorb concentrations of the test substance during a given period of time".
According to the report published in the journal, researchers focused on honey bees and used "hundreds of adult worker bees from a single hive" and treated them with different levels of glyphosate.
"Native bumblebees have microbiomes similar to honey bees, so Moran said that it is likely that they would be affected by glyphosate in a similar way," notes a statement. University of Texas at Austin.
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