Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. Any of a certain class of insecticides that act on the central nervous system in a similar way to nicotine.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Examples
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Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic.
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Clothianidin is of the neonicotinoid family of systemic pesticides, which are taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen, nectar and gutation droplets from which bees then forage and drink.
Annie Spiegelman: Beekeepers Ask EPA to Remove Bayer Pesticide Linked to Colony Collapse Disorder
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France banned the most commonly used neonicotinoid in 1999 after complaints from beekeepers that it was killing their colonies.
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The release of such a finding from the American government's own bee lab would put a major question mark over the use of neonicotinoid insecticides - relatively new compounds which mimic the insect-killing properties of nicotine, and which are increasingly used on crops in the US, Britain and around the world.
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This week, however, an Early-Day Motion was tabled in the Commons by Martin Paton, the Labour MP for Gower, calling again for the Government to suspend use of the compounds following major new controversy in the US surrounding Bayer's latest neonicotinoid - clothianidin - which is increasingly being used in Britain.
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They published their study in the journal Environmental Microbiology and said: "We demonstrated that the interaction between nosema and a neonicotinoid imidacloprid significantly weakened honeybees."
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If these pesticides are causing large numbers of honeybees, bumblebees, solitary bees, hoverflies and moths to get sick and die from diseases they would otherwise have survived, then neonicotinoid chemicals could be the main cause of both colony collapse disorder and the loss of wild pollinator populations.
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Yesterday the Buglife director, Matt Shardlow, said of the Pettis study: This new research from America confirms that at very, very low concentrations neonicotinoid chemicals can make a honeybee vulnerable to fatal disease.
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In Britain, more than 1.4 million acres were treated with the chemical in 2008, as part of total neonicotinoid use of more than 2.5 million acres - about a quarter of Britain's arable cropland.
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In 2009, Italy's neonicotinoid-free corn sowing resulted in no cases of widespread bee mortality in apiaries around the crops.
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