Apitox Task Force Noa Simon, CARI, Belgium Piotr Medrzycki, - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Apitox Task Force Noa Simon, CARI, Belgium Piotr Medrzycki, CRA-API, Italy

Background  COLOSS Task Force (TF) APITOX  group of independent scientists with interest on bee toxicology  created in 2013 at Louvain la Neuve (Belgium) in the framework of the European Beekeeping Congress Beecome

Objective  investigate the effects of environmental toxicants on bees  design methodology for the study of these effects  promote risks assessment protocols that are effective in protecting bees and bee colonies

Objective specific – EFSA GD  individuate gaps in EFSA guidelines (e.g. homing flight, honeydew) and propose improvements  individuate most important tests that need to be validated  organize international working groups for new OECD TG development and for ring-testing  fund raising at international level (maybe EC, …)

Main topics  bee ecotoxicology  exposure to environmental toxicants  methodology development and standardisation (BEEBOOK was the first important progress in standardising methods)

Philosophy Scientific rigour + Constructiveness + Independence + Democracy (on-line decisioning)

Members Criteria: ● interest to become a member ● affiliation ● presentation of his/her work ● list of publications ● declaration of interest (DOI) ● COLOSS membership The decision on the acceptance or rejection of the candidature is done on the basis of a vote of the TF members, based on the simple majority.

Past activities  2012 - Before becoming officially a TF, its members met and contributed constructively to the public discussion on the methods for Risk Assessment of Plant Protection Products on bees, carried out by the EFSA

Future perspectives  Recruitment of new members  Methodological discussions: − Chronic toxicity on adult honeybees and bioaccumulation − Brood feeding tests in lab/in field − Sublethal effects (homing, HPG, flight efficiency) − Synergistic effects − Different exposure routes (e.g. honeydew) − Standardisation of test conditions (e.g. test temperature, bee origin...) − Assessment of disorder symptoms in field − Toxicity tests on SB and BB − Others...

Thank you! Contact: Noa Simon simon@cari.be Piotr Medrzycki piotr.medrzycki@entecra.it