A laboratory bioassay was developed for testing tarnished plant bug populations for resistance development to the neonicotinoid insecticides imidacloprid and thiamethoxam. The bioassay allows for the determination of LC50 values by feeding known doses of the insecticides to adult tarnished plant bugs in a honey-water solution. Field populations of plant bugs from several locations in the mid-So...

The influence of the pH on the persistence of four neonicotinoid insecticides: imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, acetamiprid and thiacloprid, was studied by H NMR spectrometry at different pH values of Britton-Robinson buffers (4.0, 7.0 and 9.0) at a constant temeprature. Thiamethoxam and imidacloprid, having an identical nitroguanidine functional group, exhibited low persistence in alkaline media, a...

Our assessment of the multi-year overwintering study by Pilling et al. (2013) revealed a number of major deficiencies regarding the study design, the protocol and the evaluation of results. Colonies were exposed for short periods per year to flowering oilseed rape and maize grown from thiamethoxam-coated seeds. Thiamethoxam as the sole active ingredient was used, not a more efficacious commerci...

BACKGROUND Neonicotinoid insecticides are generally efficacious against many turfgrass pests, including several important phloem-feeding insects. However, inconsistencies in control of western chinch bugs, Blissus occiduus, have been documented in field efficacy studies. This research investigated the efficacy of three neonicotinoid insecticides (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam) aga...

Concentration-response assays were conducted from 2008 through 2015 to measure the susceptibility of field populations of Lygus lineolaris (Palisot de Beauvois) from the Delta regions of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to acephate, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, permethrin, and sulfoxaflor. A total of 229 field populations were examined for susceptibility to acephate, 145 for susceptibility t...

Neonicotinoid insecticides are now the most widely used insecticides in the world. 10 Previous studies have indicated that sublethal doses of neonicotinoids impair learning, memory 11 capacity, foraging and immunocompetence in honeybees (Apis mellifera). Despite this, few 12 studies have been carried out on the molecular effects of neonicotinoids. In this study, we focus on 13 the second-genera...

Pesticides, including neonicotinoids, typically target pest insects by being neurotoxic. Inadvertent exposure to foraging insect pollinators is usually sub-lethal, but may affect cognition. One cognitive trait, spatial working memory, may be important in avoiding previously-visited flowers and other spatial tasks such as navigation. To test this, we investigated the effect of acute thiamethoxam...

The widespread use of neonicotinoid insecticides and recent increased regulatory scrutiny requires the generation of monitoring data with sufficient scope and resolution to provide decision makers with a better understanding of occurrence and distribution in the environment. This study presents a wide-scale investigation of neonicotinoid insecticides used across the range of agricultural activi...