Climate change and pesticides: molecular and physiological processes underpinning pollinator responses to stress.

In the last decades, unusual rates of pollinator losses have been recorded all over the world, threatening both food security and biodiversity.
A primary driver of pollinator decline at temperate latitudes is climate change. In combination, bees are exposed to increasing quantities and different cocktails of pesticides. Unfortunately, we currently have a very poor understanding of how pesticide exposure might influence insect responses to climate change or other environmental stressors.
Recently, omic-technologies have been employed to enhance the understanding of molecular processes involved in organism responses to a variety of environmental stressors however few studies have considered how multiple stressors interact. This project will employ state-of-the-art physiological and molecular techniques to investigate how a key UK pollinator, Bombus terrestris, responds to combined stress events, and the impact on survival/tolerance thresholds.