8 ms·

Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees

165 points by mayamatrix 8y ago

40four 8y ago
Glyphosate is the main ingredient in "Round up". I imagine residential use probably has a minimal impact, but this seems like a big problem considering the rise of "Round up resistant" crops. When whole fields are being sprayed at scale, seems like that could be very disruptive to a bee population.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  Actually, it's quite possible that residential use is much more harmful than agricultural usage. The study used very high concentrations of glyphosate, and residential usage of glyphosate uses it at a much higher concentration than farmers do.
  - chicob 8y ago
    I was about to say that. From a personal experience (I'm a farmer) the concentrations used in a residential context are exaggeratedly above the recommendation. They are mismeasured and generally high. Plus, glyphosate preparations need to be corrected in pH (below 5 for maximal efficacy), which is something many people don't do. The professionals doing weed control in cities absolutely must have training and adequate PPE. The same thing applies to pest control. I'm not against professional usage of pesticides, but I would be OK with forbidding most insecticides and herbicides for personal usage. The every day insecticide spraying can? That thing is poison. Does anyone use a FFP2 mask or even a simple cotton mask? Many permetrine-based insecticides don't even mention that this active substance is specially deadly to cats.
    - Karunamon 8y ago
      >I'm not against professional usage of pesticides, but I would be OK with forbidding most insecticides and herbicides for personal usage That is entirely unreasonable as a conclusion. It leads to a world where only people rich enough to hire landscapers and exterminators are able to control insects and weeds. Of course insecticide is poison. That's literally the point. Don't breathe it, get it on you, or let your pets around it. It's not difficult advice to abide by.
      - klmr 8y ago
        You make a good point but I wouldn’t banning a potentially dangerous chemical that requires expert use to be safe “entirely unreasonable”. In fact the same is true for most such compounds, at least in large parts of Western Europe (less so in the US, I think, but something as harmless as Sudafed is a counter-example): there are many industrial chemicals which you cannot (or only via detours) purchase legally in stores. I’m generally not a fan of such regulations because most of these chemicals have no common use and the potential for abuse is therefore relatively small. But for many pesticides and herbicides, the potential for harmful misuse is very real.
      - chicob 8y ago
        I usually can find several consumer-grade insecticides that make no mention of the active substances they contain, the health risks, and security or no-entry intervals. If informed professionals need this information, won't lay people need it as well?
  - chicob 8y ago
    Also, sometimes I don't understand the downvotes. This baffles me. Your comment is perfectly reasonable, and so is the comment you were replying to, even if one doesn't agree with it.
  - chicob 8y ago
    Just as a reference, the last time I used glyphosate the concentration was 15 L of concentrate (glyphosate 360 g/L) to 1000 L water. This is equivalent to 5,4 g/L. The study mentions two concentrations, 10 g/L and 5 g/L, so I think this is representative. Generally I would use more glyphosate, but now I usually mix it with oxyfluorfen in order to cope with glyphosate resistance and use less of each.
    - bryanlarsen 8y ago
      Representative if the bees are drinking straight from your sprayer, for multiple days in a row.
      - chicob 8y ago
        Actually, it's the other way around. My bad. I misread the paper: it says 5 mg/L and 10 mg/L, which is a thousand times less concentrated than the prepared spray. At any rate, this is the environmental dosage the bees come in contact with, not the sprayer's concentration. So I searched for the basis for those targets of 5 mg/L and 10 mg/L. The article reads: "Glyphosate concentrations were chosen to mimic environmental levels, which typically range between 1.4 and 7.6 mg/L".[original article] The reference for this interval[1] makes reference to three other papers. One of these (from 1988) makes reference to another study on the "effects of a 2.2 L/ha Roundup application".[2] Another, from 1990, mentions an analysis of water residues "following application of ROUNDUP (2.0 kg/ha)"[3]. I have no idea what residues I'd find in my property, but the recommended dosage of concentrated product is still 2-4 L/ha. I am currently doing 3 L/ha. Different brands of glyphosate concentrate usually have the same concentration, but this value might have changed after 30 years. [1] http://jeb.biologists.org/content/217/19/3457?ijkey=7c53a3bc50ed646e5d5eb11fee123cf24faf0b0a&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha http://jeb.biologists.org/content/217/19/3457?ijkey=7c53a3bc... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01705439 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01705439 [3] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf00094a045 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf00094a045
seattle_spring 8y ago
Is this the study that's based on some extremely small amount of bees (45?) being completely submerged in glyohosate? "We found that babies, when submerged in 100% water for ONLY 5 MINUTES, had extremely averse reactions. We must ban water before it continues to hurt our children!"
- GW150914 8y ago
  Is this the study that's based on some extremely small amount of bees (45?) being completely submerged in glyohosate? "We found that babies, when submerged in 100% water for ONLY 5 MINUTES, had extremely averse reactions. We must ban water before it continues to hurt our children!" Did you read the methods section? They did no such thing, and I’m curious as to why you claim that they did. At least have the intellectual honesty to yourself if no one else, to skim the study before posting nonsense. Hundreds of late-stage pupae were removed from brood frames and allowed to emerge under sterile conditions in laboratory. (Experiment A) NEWs were exposed to bee gut homogenate for 5 d, then hand fed 1 mM glyphosate or sterile sugar syrup on 2 alternate days. Fifteen bees from each group were sampled 2 d after the last hand feeding. DNA was extracted from dissected guts, used as template for qPCR analyses, and submitted for Illumina sequencing at the GSAF, UT Austin. (Experiment B) NEWs were exposed to a bee gut homogenate or sterile sucrose syrup. Each group was divided into two subgroups and treated with 0.1 mM glyphosate or sterile sucrose syrup for 5 d. After that, half of the subgroups was exposed to the opportunistic pathogen S. marcescens kz19, whereas the other half was used as controls. Bees were exposed to similar amounts of glyphosate (∼1.7 µg) in experiments A and B. NEWs were hand fed 5 µL sucrose syrup containing ∼105 cells of S. alvi wkB2 or wkB339 or sterile sucrose syrup as control. Hand fed does not equal “immersed in for 5 minutes” by any means. In Vitro Experiments with Bee Gut Bacterial Strains. Honey bee and bumble bee gut bacterial strains (SI Appendix, Table S1) were cultured in InsectaGro or MRS broth in the presence or absence of 10 mM glyphosate in a 96-well plate and incubated in a plate reader at 35 °C and 5% CO2 for 48 h. Optical density was measured at 600 nm every 6 h. Experiments were performed in triplicate. Plasmid Construction and Transformation. The aroA, yhhS, and tetC genes from various bacterial strains were PCR amplified and cloned into the arabinose-inducible pBAD30 vector (45) by Gibson assembly (46) and then used to transform E. coli strain BW25113 or a derivative lacking the aroA gene by electroporation. Primer sequences are listed in SI Appendix, Table S2. Growth Rate Analysis of Transformed E. coli. Transformed E. coli cells were cultured in duplicate in 24-well plates containing M9 minimal medium (47) with appropriate antibiotics, varying concentrations of glyphosate, and varying concentrations of arabinose. The plates were incubated in a plate reader at 37 °C for 24–96 h. Optical density was measured at 600 nm every hour. All in all it’s a diverse and comprehensive methodology which still needs to be replicated, but not dismissed offhand by you.
arctangos 8y ago
I find it disheartening that it takes studies of this nature to reshape regulations. Glyphosate (as Roundup) has been the bestselling herbicide on the market since 1980. Among bee-keepers, asserting that "roundup kills bees" is about as controversial as "rain makes things wet." The US regulatory environment treats artificially prepared chemicals as innocent until proven guilty. A safer approach (recently adopted in Europe) would be to guarantee the safety of industrial, agricultural, and household chemicals before they are allowed to go to market. On a potentially related note, sperm counts in the western world have been declining precipitously since 1990. I'd bet that glyphosate and/or other common poorly regulated chemicals have something to do with this. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count-dropping-in-western-world/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count-dropp...
- sebazzz 8y ago
  > On a potentially related note, sperm counts in the western world have been declining precipitously since 1990. This is also associated with birth control. The problem is that is hard to do extensive studies on this and get compelling evidence, but it is true, we are not "better safe than sorry".
  - code_duck 8y ago
    It is also associated with dozens of compounds found as pollutants or contaminants in food, air, water, personal care products and cleaners... and many of the ingredients put in on purpose. Who knows. It’s probably a result of an additive or synergistic effect of a dozen causes.
- klmr 8y ago
  > I find it disheartening that it takes studies of this nature to reshape regulations. You … find it disheartening that regulations require sound evidence? That’s odd. > Among bee-keepers, asserting that "roundup kills bees" is about as controversial as "rain makes things wet." You may be confusing Roundup with neonicotinoids here. The latter are known to harm bee ecosystems by weakening the bee immune system. Glyphosate generally hasn’t, despite previous studies (which showed no effect on bees). That’s why the new study is actually surprising (if it holds up, and there are already some potential concerns). > I'd bet that glyphosate and/or other common poorly regulated chemicals have something to do with [reduction in sperm counts]. There is no evidence for this, and no good reason to assume so (for one, there’s no known biochemical connection here, and the general population does not come into contact with glyphosate in noticeable amounts). A much more plausible reason is the presence of residues from hormonal contraceptives in drinking water. But even that is tenuous, and general changes in nutrition are a more plausible candidate. In sum, nothing of what you’ve said is supported by evidence.
bryanlarsen 8y ago
This is a "coffee causes cancer" type of study. The concentrations involved are very high. And as they say, "the dose makes the poison". But it's a great first study; there will be lots of people looking a lot closer at the link now.
- shijie 8y ago
  No, it's not. Did you read the article? From the study: Glyphosate concentrations were chosen to mimic environmental levels, which typically range between 1.4 and 7.6 mg/L, and may be encountered by bees foraging at flowering weeds. They fed the bees concoctions of Glyphosate between 5 mg/L and 10 mg/L, which at the top end is a bit more than 7.6 mg/L, but still quite near normal parameters found in a normal environment.
  - bryanlarsen 8y ago
    Those are high normal concentrations for glyphosate in spot spraying applications, not for the much more common broadcast applications, and assume that the bees are drinking straight from the sprayer for five days in a row.
mkettn 8y ago
Figure 1 looks weird. At day 0 the ranges for the bacterias in the evaluated groups (C, G-5, G-10) differ a lot - Is this noise? Why? If i interpret this graphic right the study did find bacteria changes at lower levels of glyphosate(G-5), but not at higher levels of glyphosate expose (G-10). I am no bee expert but I doubt that bees normally eat sugar syrup all day - which also will contribute to the weird stuff happening in the C-group in comparision from day 0 to 3.
hinkley 8y ago
I don’t care what glyphosate does or doesn’t do. Monsanto has a pile of research showing it as mostly harmless. Maybe that’s like Big Tobacco. Time will tell. What I do care about is what Roundup does. There are many many curious compounds in Roundup, and some of them appear to be much nastier than glyphosate. If for instance all of these stomach problems people have been having lately are caused by application of Roundup to aid in grain harvesting, we need to know sooner rather than later. And it doesn’t really matter as much to me which chemical is the culprit. It’s the same bad actors regardless.
- bmillare 8y ago
  Yes, just like this study shows: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894
  - hinkley 8y ago
    > Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient. Yeah. I dunno why that's surprising. We put surfactants in pesticides so that the bugs absorb more. Stabilizers in other things so they don't break down. This is just another Thursday.
sampo 8y ago
A critical comment: Look at Figure 1B. The variation in the gut microbes is large at the start of the study (day 0). Feeding the bees 5 mg/liter glyphosate, they have a statistically significant difference from the control (no glyphosate) in 5 microbes out of 8. But feeding 10 mg/liter, they get no statistically significant differences from the control. They have no explanation for why glyphosate seems to have an effect at 5 mg/litre concentration but not at the higher 10 mg/litre concentration ("The relative lack of effects of the G-10 treatment on the microbiota composition at day 3 posttreatment is unexplained"). They do give speculations, though.
chr1 8y ago
We need to invest more into development of gene drives for elimination of agricultural pests. The recent development of gene drive on doublesex gene for mosquitoes gives hope that it can work for majority of insects. And if we find a way to use similar technique for plants, the resulting reduction of pesticide use will be helpful not only for the people but also for remaining species of insects and plants.
macawfish 8y ago
Maybe some self righteous "skeptics" could take this as a moment to apologize, figuratively or actually, to the people they derided as "quacks" for urging caution about glyphosate.
- CodeWriter23 8y ago
  No, they’ll just move on to attacking people about other products where the assumptions of safety or efficacy have not yet been debunked. Thanks for the good laugh though.
partingshots 8y ago
Bayer really messed up with their Monsanto acquisition. Right when sentiment against the company reached a breaking point, and people finally began imposing a concerted backlash.
nikkiofearth 8y ago
Is this the reason they have been dying! WOOT! Will we be able to change fast enough to save them?
bmillare 8y ago
Worse, Roundup (what's actually being sprayed) is likely causing even more damage than what these glyphosate (just one "active" ingredient) studies are suggesting since other studies demonstrate a significant difference in effect of the cocktail vs just the "active" ingredient https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894
nyc111 8y ago
Is there a living creature without a microbiome?

165 points by mayamatrix 8y ago

Glyphosate is the main ingredient in "Round up". I imagine residential use probably has a minimal impact, but this seems like a big problem considering the rise of "Round up resistant" crops. When whole fields are being sprayed at scale, seems like that could be very disruptive to a bee population.

bryanlarsen 8y ago
Actually, it's quite possible that residential use is much more harmful than agricultural usage. The study used very high concentrations of glyphosate, and residential usage of glyphosate uses it at a much higher concentration than farmers do.
- chicob 8y ago
  I was about to say that. From a personal experience (I'm a farmer) the concentrations used in a residential context are exaggeratedly above the recommendation. They are mismeasured and generally high. Plus, glyphosate preparations need to be corrected in pH (below 5 for maximal efficacy), which is something many people don't do. The professionals doing weed control in cities absolutely must have training and adequate PPE. The same thing applies to pest control. I'm not against professional usage of pesticides, but I would be OK with forbidding most insecticides and herbicides for personal usage. The every day insecticide spraying can? That thing is poison. Does anyone use a FFP2 mask or even a simple cotton mask? Many permetrine-based insecticides don't even mention that this active substance is specially deadly to cats.
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    >I'm not against professional usage of pesticides, but I would be OK with forbidding most insecticides and herbicides for personal usage That is entirely unreasonable as a conclusion. It leads to a world where only people rich enough to hire landscapers and exterminators are able to control insects and weeds. Of course insecticide is poison. That's literally the point. Don't breathe it, get it on you, or let your pets around it. It's not difficult advice to abide by.
    - klmr 8y ago
      You make a good point but I wouldn’t banning a potentially dangerous chemical that requires expert use to be safe “entirely unreasonable”. In fact the same is true for most such compounds, at least in large parts of Western Europe (less so in the US, I think, but something as harmless as Sudafed is a counter-example): there are many industrial chemicals which you cannot (or only via detours) purchase legally in stores. I’m generally not a fan of such regulations because most of these chemicals have no common use and the potential for abuse is therefore relatively small. But for many pesticides and herbicides, the potential for harmful misuse is very real.
    - chicob 8y ago
      I usually can find several consumer-grade insecticides that make no mention of the active substances they contain, the health risks, and security or no-entry intervals. If informed professionals need this information, won't lay people need it as well?
- chicob 8y ago
  Also, sometimes I don't understand the downvotes. This baffles me. Your comment is perfectly reasonable, and so is the comment you were replying to, even if one doesn't agree with it.
- chicob 8y ago
  Just as a reference, the last time I used glyphosate the concentration was 15 L of concentrate (glyphosate 360 g/L) to 1000 L water. This is equivalent to 5,4 g/L. The study mentions two concentrations, 10 g/L and 5 g/L, so I think this is representative. Generally I would use more glyphosate, but now I usually mix it with oxyfluorfen in order to cope with glyphosate resistance and use less of each.
  - bryanlarsen 8y ago
    Representative if the bees are drinking straight from your sprayer, for multiple days in a row.
    - chicob 8y ago
      Actually, it's the other way around. My bad. I misread the paper: it says 5 mg/L and 10 mg/L, which is a thousand times less concentrated than the prepared spray. At any rate, this is the environmental dosage the bees come in contact with, not the sprayer's concentration. So I searched for the basis for those targets of 5 mg/L and 10 mg/L. The article reads: "Glyphosate concentrations were chosen to mimic environmental levels, which typically range between 1.4 and 7.6 mg/L".[original article] The reference for this interval[1] makes reference to three other papers. One of these (from 1988) makes reference to another study on the "effects of a 2.2 L/ha Roundup application".[2] Another, from 1990, mentions an analysis of water residues "following application of ROUNDUP (2.0 kg/ha)"[3]. I have no idea what residues I'd find in my property, but the recommended dosage of concentrated product is still 2-4 L/ha. I am currently doing 3 L/ha. Different brands of glyphosate concentrate usually have the same concentration, but this value might have changed after 30 years. [1] http://jeb.biologists.org/content/217/19/3457?ijkey=7c53a3bc50ed646e5d5eb11fee123cf24faf0b0a&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha http://jeb.biologists.org/content/217/19/3457?ijkey=7c53a3bc... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01705439 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01705439 [3] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf00094a045 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf00094a045

seattle_spring 8y ago

Is this the study that's based on some extremely small amount of bees (45?) being completely submerged in glyohosate? "We found that babies, when submerged in 100% water for ONLY 5 MINUTES, had extremely averse reactions. We must ban water before it continues to hurt our children!"

GW150914 8y ago
Is this the study that's based on some extremely small amount of bees (45?) being completely submerged in glyohosate? "We found that babies, when submerged in 100% water for ONLY 5 MINUTES, had extremely averse reactions. We must ban water before it continues to hurt our children!" Did you read the methods section? They did no such thing, and I’m curious as to why you claim that they did. At least have the intellectual honesty to yourself if no one else, to skim the study before posting nonsense. Hundreds of late-stage pupae were removed from brood frames and allowed to emerge under sterile conditions in laboratory. (Experiment A) NEWs were exposed to bee gut homogenate for 5 d, then hand fed 1 mM glyphosate or sterile sugar syrup on 2 alternate days. Fifteen bees from each group were sampled 2 d after the last hand feeding. DNA was extracted from dissected guts, used as template for qPCR analyses, and submitted for Illumina sequencing at the GSAF, UT Austin. (Experiment B) NEWs were exposed to a bee gut homogenate or sterile sucrose syrup. Each group was divided into two subgroups and treated with 0.1 mM glyphosate or sterile sucrose syrup for 5 d. After that, half of the subgroups was exposed to the opportunistic pathogen S. marcescens kz19, whereas the other half was used as controls. Bees were exposed to similar amounts of glyphosate (∼1.7 µg) in experiments A and B. NEWs were hand fed 5 µL sucrose syrup containing ∼105 cells of S. alvi wkB2 or wkB339 or sterile sucrose syrup as control. Hand fed does not equal “immersed in for 5 minutes” by any means. In Vitro Experiments with Bee Gut Bacterial Strains. Honey bee and bumble bee gut bacterial strains (SI Appendix, Table S1) were cultured in InsectaGro or MRS broth in the presence or absence of 10 mM glyphosate in a 96-well plate and incubated in a plate reader at 35 °C and 5% CO2 for 48 h. Optical density was measured at 600 nm every 6 h. Experiments were performed in triplicate. Plasmid Construction and Transformation. The aroA, yhhS, and tetC genes from various bacterial strains were PCR amplified and cloned into the arabinose-inducible pBAD30 vector (45) by Gibson assembly (46) and then used to transform E. coli strain BW25113 or a derivative lacking the aroA gene by electroporation. Primer sequences are listed in SI Appendix, Table S2. Growth Rate Analysis of Transformed E. coli. Transformed E. coli cells were cultured in duplicate in 24-well plates containing M9 minimal medium (47) with appropriate antibiotics, varying concentrations of glyphosate, and varying concentrations of arabinose. The plates were incubated in a plate reader at 37 °C for 24–96 h. Optical density was measured at 600 nm every hour. All in all it’s a diverse and comprehensive methodology which still needs to be replicated, but not dismissed offhand by you.

arctangos 8y ago

I find it disheartening that it takes studies of this nature to reshape regulations. Glyphosate (as Roundup) has been the bestselling herbicide on the market since 1980. Among bee-keepers, asserting that "roundup kills bees" is about as controversial as "rain makes things wet." The US regulatory environment treats artificially prepared chemicals as innocent until proven guilty. A safer approach (recently adopted in Europe) would be to guarantee the safety of industrial, agricultural, and household chemicals before they are allowed to go to market. On a potentially related note, sperm counts in the western world have been declining precipitously since 1990. I'd bet that glyphosate and/or other common poorly regulated chemicals have something to do with this. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count-dropping-in-western-world/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count-dropp...

sebazzz 8y ago
> On a potentially related note, sperm counts in the western world have been declining precipitously since 1990. This is also associated with birth control. The problem is that is hard to do extensive studies on this and get compelling evidence, but it is true, we are not "better safe than sorry".
- code_duck 8y ago
  It is also associated with dozens of compounds found as pollutants or contaminants in food, air, water, personal care products and cleaners... and many of the ingredients put in on purpose. Who knows. It’s probably a result of an additive or synergistic effect of a dozen causes.
klmr 8y ago
> I find it disheartening that it takes studies of this nature to reshape regulations. You … find it disheartening that regulations require sound evidence? That’s odd. > Among bee-keepers, asserting that "roundup kills bees" is about as controversial as "rain makes things wet." You may be confusing Roundup with neonicotinoids here. The latter are known to harm bee ecosystems by weakening the bee immune system. Glyphosate generally hasn’t, despite previous studies (which showed no effect on bees). That’s why the new study is actually surprising (if it holds up, and there are already some potential concerns). > I'd bet that glyphosate and/or other common poorly regulated chemicals have something to do with [reduction in sperm counts]. There is no evidence for this, and no good reason to assume so (for one, there’s no known biochemical connection here, and the general population does not come into contact with glyphosate in noticeable amounts). A much more plausible reason is the presence of residues from hormonal contraceptives in drinking water. But even that is tenuous, and general changes in nutrition are a more plausible candidate. In sum, nothing of what you’ve said is supported by evidence.

bryanlarsen 8y ago

This is a "coffee causes cancer" type of study. The concentrations involved are very high. And as they say, "the dose makes the poison". But it's a great first study; there will be lots of people looking a lot closer at the link now.

shijie 8y ago
No, it's not. Did you read the article? From the study: Glyphosate concentrations were chosen to mimic environmental levels, which typically range between 1.4 and 7.6 mg/L, and may be encountered by bees foraging at flowering weeds. They fed the bees concoctions of Glyphosate between 5 mg/L and 10 mg/L, which at the top end is a bit more than 7.6 mg/L, but still quite near normal parameters found in a normal environment.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  Those are high normal concentrations for glyphosate in spot spraying applications, not for the much more common broadcast applications, and assume that the bees are drinking straight from the sprayer for five days in a row.

mkettn 8y ago

Figure 1 looks weird. At day 0 the ranges for the bacterias in the evaluated groups (C, G-5, G-10) differ a lot - Is this noise? Why? If i interpret this graphic right the study did find bacteria changes at lower levels of glyphosate(G-5), but not at higher levels of glyphosate expose (G-10). I am no bee expert but I doubt that bees normally eat sugar syrup all day - which also will contribute to the weird stuff happening in the C-group in comparision from day 0 to 3.

hinkley 8y ago

I don’t care what glyphosate does or doesn’t do. Monsanto has a pile of research showing it as mostly harmless. Maybe that’s like Big Tobacco. Time will tell. What I do care about is what Roundup does. There are many many curious compounds in Roundup, and some of them appear to be much nastier than glyphosate. If for instance all of these stomach problems people have been having lately are caused by application of Roundup to aid in grain harvesting, we need to know sooner rather than later. And it doesn’t really matter as much to me which chemical is the culprit. It’s the same bad actors regardless.

bmillare 8y ago
Yes, just like this study shows: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894
- hinkley 8y ago
  > Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient. Yeah. I dunno why that's surprising. We put surfactants in pesticides so that the bugs absorb more. Stabilizers in other things so they don't break down. This is just another Thursday.

sampo 8y ago

A critical comment: Look at Figure 1B. The variation in the gut microbes is large at the start of the study (day 0). Feeding the bees 5 mg/liter glyphosate, they have a statistically significant difference from the control (no glyphosate) in 5 microbes out of 8. But feeding 10 mg/liter, they get no statistically significant differences from the control. They have no explanation for why glyphosate seems to have an effect at 5 mg/litre concentration but not at the higher 10 mg/litre concentration ("The relative lack of effects of the G-10 treatment on the microbiota composition at day 3 posttreatment is unexplained"). They do give speculations, though.

chr1 8y ago

We need to invest more into development of gene drives for elimination of agricultural pests. The recent development of gene drive on doublesex gene for mosquitoes gives hope that it can work for majority of insects. And if we find a way to use similar technique for plants, the resulting reduction of pesticide use will be helpful not only for the people but also for remaining species of insects and plants.

macawfish 8y ago

Maybe some self righteous "skeptics" could take this as a moment to apologize, figuratively or actually, to the people they derided as "quacks" for urging caution about glyphosate.

CodeWriter23 8y ago
No, they’ll just move on to attacking people about other products where the assumptions of safety or efficacy have not yet been debunked. Thanks for the good laugh though.

partingshots 8y ago

Bayer really messed up with their Monsanto acquisition. Right when sentiment against the company reached a breaking point, and people finally began imposing a concerted backlash.

nikkiofearth 8y ago

Is this the reason they have been dying! WOOT! Will we be able to change fast enough to save them?

bmillare 8y ago

Worse, Roundup (what's actually being sprayed) is likely causing even more damage than what these glyphosate (just one "active" ingredient) studies are suggesting since other studies demonstrate a significant difference in effect of the cocktail vs just the "active" ingredient https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15929894

nyc111 8y ago

Is there a living creature without a microbiome?