No abstract

The effects of two successive annual treatments of imidacloprid and fipronil on dragonfly nymph communities, which are one of the best-known bioindicators in Japanese agroecosystems, were monitored in experimental paddies.e abundance of dragon y nymphs was lower in both insecticides-treated elds than it was in the controls, particularly following pronil treatments. Residues of both insecticides were found in the soil throughout the two years, and imidacloprid persisted in water up to three months following each treatment. A Principal Response Curve analysis (PRC) showed that the second annual treatments caused greater structural changes in dragon y nymph communities than the initial treatments caused, particularly for pronil. e community structures continued to change even a er the insecticides dissipated from the water. is suggests that ecological impacts, and therefore risks, of imidacloprid and pronil on dragon y nymph communities depend more on soil residues than they do on waterborne residues. As expected, susceptibility of dragonfly nymphs to these two insecticides differed among species.

Declines in honeybee populations have been a recent concern. Although causes of the declines remain unclear, environmental factors may be responsible. We focused on the potential environmental determinants of local populations of wild honeybees, Apis cerana japonica, in Japan. This subspecies has little genetic variation in terms of its mitochondrial DNA sequences, and genetic variations at nuclear loci are as yet unknown. We estimated the genetic structure and environmental determinants of local genetic diversity in nuclear microsatellite genotypes of fathers and mothers, inferred from workers collected at 139 sites. The genotypes of fathers and mothers showed weak isolation by distance and negligible genetic structure. The local genetic diversity was high in central Japan, decreasing toward the peripheries, and depended on the climate and land use characteristics of the sites. The local genetic diversity decreased as the annual precipitation increased, and increased as the proportion of urban and paddy field areas increased. Positive effects of natural forest area, which have also been observed in terms of forager abundance in farms, were not detected with respect to the local genetic diversity. The findings suggest that A. cerana japonica forms a single population connected by gene flow in its main distributional range, and that climate and landscape properties potentially affect its local genetic diversity.