Abstract
Glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) are the best-selling pesticides in Brazil, with hundreds of thousands of tons sold per year. There is no study investigating morphological alterations caused by GBH on the epithelium of the gut in bees. Here, we aimed to demonstrate effects of chronic ingestion of GBH in the midgut digestive cells of the Brazilian stingless bee Melipona quadrifasciata quadrifasciata Lepeletier 1836. We kept forager workers of M. quadrifasciata in laboratory conditions and fed on food contaminated with three different concentrations of GBH for 10 days, after which the midgut digestive cell structure and ultrastructure were analyzed. The presence of GBH in food did not affect food consumption, indicating that M. quadrifasciata bees do not reject food contaminated with GBH. As digestive cells of the midgut release apocrine secretion as a detoxication mechanism, we expected that the ingestion of food contaminated with GBH in the present study affect the height of midgut digestive cells. However, such reduction did not occur, probably because of the low-test concentrations. Although there were differences in digestive cell ultrastructure, ingestion of GBH impaired midgut digestive cell cohesion by disorganizing the smooth septate junctions between cells, which may probably be caused by the adjuvant “polyethoxylated tallow amine” present in the GBH. Previous studies demonstrated that GBH increase bees’ sensibility to intestine infections, based on the present results we hypothesized that the loss of cell cohesion in the midgut epithelium favors pathogenic microbial infections and harms food absorption, increasing bees’ mortality.
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This work was supported by the Research Support Agency of the State of Goiás and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (FAPEG/CNPq project numbers 20121076700081 and 201810267001731). The authors thank Labmic/UFG (Laboratory of High-Resolution Microscopy) for technical support.
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All authors contributed to study conception. P. C. Silva and P. Brito performed material preparation and data collection. B. Gonçalves performed statistical analyses. E. Franceschinelli and P. Brito achieved funding resources. P. Brito wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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da Silva, P.C., Gonçalves, B., Franceschinelli, E. et al. Glyphosate-Based Herbicide Causes Cellular Alterations to Gut Epithelium of the Neotropical Stingless Bee Melipona quadrifasciata quadrifasciata (Hymenoptera: Meliponini). Neotrop Entomol 51, 860–868 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-022-01001-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-022-01001-5