The potential impacts of insecticides on the life-history traits of bees and the consequences for pollination

Maintaining the relationships between plants and pollinators is vital to ecosystem stability. Insecticides may disturb these interactions with poorly understood consequences for pollination. Community level research is essential, if we are to understand the wider effects of insecticides on a variety of pollinating taxa and the impacts on the plants they pollinate. In this article we discuss the potential effects of both the lethal and sub-lethal impacts of insecticide use in agro-ecosystems on pollination services by bees. In particular, we consider how particular life-history traits of pollinators, such as sociality and floral specialisation may be differentially affected by insecticides. We discuss how this might translate through to pollination services. We propose that a trait-based approach can give insight into the potential impacts of insecticides on plant pollinator communities.