Algemeen

In Europe's temperate forests, less common plant species are being replaced by more widespread species. An international team of researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has found that this development could be related to an increased nitrogen deposition. Their results have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Humans have caused almost 600 plant species to be wiped from existence over the past 250 years in a long term trend which scientists have described as an “unprecedented” rate of decline. An analysis of all plant extinction records documented from across the world by scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Stockholm University found 571 known plant species had completely disappeared from the wild since the industrial revolution. This is more than twice the number of birds, mammals and amphibians which have become extinct over the same period combined.

Experts from Suffolk Wildlife Trust, Buglife and the RSPB have all pointed to species in danger of disappearing from East Anglia. They include stone curlew - only 202 pairs nested in the East of England last year; the shrill carder bee - common in the region 25 years ago but now found only in the Thames Gateway area; and the crested cow-wheat - a plant limited to a small number of roadside verges because grassland has disappeared to farming or construction. Indeed, habitat destruction and human disturbance are cited as the two most common reasons these species are on the brink.

An Ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled to UV detection method was developed to determine acetamiprid residues in water reservoirs of northern Benin, close to cotton fields. The quantification limit of this method was 0.2 µg L−1 acetamiprid in water, its precision ranged between 8% and 22%, and its trueness between 99% and 117% (for concentrations ranging from 0.2 to 5.0 µg L−1). Acetamiprid residues were determined in water samples collected in four reservoirs from northern Benin during the phytosanitary treatment period of cotton.

Pesticide use is driving an “alarming” decline in the world’s insects that could have a “catastrophic” impact on nature’s ecosystems, researchers have warned. More than 40 per cent of insect species are at risk of extinction with decades, with climate change and pollution also to blame, according to a global scientific review. Their numbers are plummeting so precipitously that almost all insects could vanish within a century, the study found.

Residue data for seven neonicotinoid pesticides collected between 1999 and 2015 by the US Department of Agriculture’s Pesticide Data Program (PDP) were collated and summarized by year across various food commodities, including fruit, vegetable, meat, dairy, grain, honey, and baby food, as well as water to qualitatively describe and examine trends in contamination frequency and residue concentrations. The highest detection frequencies (DFs) for neonicotinoids by year on all commodities were generally below 20%.