Honeybees as chemical biosensors in environment

Authors

Plant Protection Department, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran

Abstract

Insect olfaction systems enable them to detect very small amounts of environmental pollutants such as
heavy metals, pesticides and secondary metabolites of disease pathogens such as bacteria. This process is
called “biomonitoring”, which has attracted the attention of researchers as a result of low cost compared
with other methods of monitoring. It has been proven that different animals like honeybees are trained for
the sensitivity of their olfaction system through effective conditioning based on the responsive behavior of
the visible smells to detect smuggling drugs, explosives, and even human diseases. Generally, environmental
pollutant monitoring may be conducted through the assessment of honeybee specific behavior such as
proboscis extension reflex (PER) in response to pollutants and chemical residue monitoring in colony
products or honeybee body tissue. This paper pays attention to the ability of honeybees to monitor pollutants
and other chemical compounds in the environment

Keywords

Honeybee Science Journal
Volume 09, Issue 17
February 2019
Pages 41-50

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics