In the wild, bees rarely deal with one problem at a time. A bumblebee colony may be exposed to pesticides while also fighting parasites or struggling to find enough good-quality food. Most risk assessments still look at these stressors one by one, but in real landscapes they often act together. Their combined effect can differ from the effect of each one alone - they can add up but also amplify each other.

In a new WildPosh training video, Basile Vandendyck (University of Mons) explains how he designed an experiment to study this. The aim is to find out how additional stressors, such as parasites and nutritional stress, change the lethal effects of pesticides on bumblebees. In the video, Basile walks through the key steps of building a multi-stressor experiment.

The video is part of WildPosh’s training video series.

Watch the video: