Are Pollinator Conservation Efforts Actually Hurting the Very Species We’re Trying to Protect?
With increasing urbanization and declining populations of native pollinators, states and communities have fought to continue to provide habitat for native pollinators in order to combat their decline. One key effort has been utilizing roadside ditches as a space to plant more habitat for pollinators. The potential risk in planting within these areas is the pollutants from car wear-and-tear, road maintenance, and industrial areas end up in the roadside ditches, and are incorporated into the soil . These pollutants can then transfer into the plants, which can result in high concentrations of pollutants in pollinator’s diets. While the lethal effects of high-dose exposure to many road-side pollutants is fairly well well-understood, we still do not have a clear understanding of the potential sublethal effects that low-dose exposure may have. For example, low-level exposure to pollutants can increase stress during development and may have cascading impacts on resources allocation, growth, and immunity that can impact fitness and survival in a natural context. To determine if low dose exposure to a heavy metal commonly found on roadsides is damaging, we used Cabbage White butterflies, Pieris rapae, as a model organism. Individuals were raised on three diets, with varying concentrations of ZnCl, and evaluated for survivorship, development time, body size, reproductive investment, and immunity. The results presented will highlight whether low-dose exposure of heavy metals causes sublethal effects to occur, which can be applied back to the effects heavy metals may have on native pollinators.