WildPosh – Pan European assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of chemical stressors on the health of wild pollinators

Project goal: WildPosh is a multi-actor, transdisciplinary project whose overarching mission and ambition is to significantly improve the evaluation of risk to pesticide exposure of wild pollinators and enhance the sustainable health of pollinators and pollination services in Europe.

Project description:
Wild fauna and flora are facing variable and challenging environmental disturbances. One of the animal groups that is most impacted by this concerns pollinators. Pollinators face multiple threats, but the spread of anthropogenic chemicals (i.e. pesticides) forms a major potential driver of these threats. WildPosh is a multi-actor, transdisciplinary project whose overarching mission and ambition is to significantly improve the evaluation of risk to pesticide exposure of wild pollinators and enhance the sustainable health of pollinators and pollination services in Europe. As chemical exposure varies geographically, across cropping systems, inside the crop system and among pollinators, we will characterize exposure by doing fieldwork in 4 countries representing the four main climatic European regions, Mediterranean, Atlantic, Continental and Boreal climate in Germany, England, Estonia and Spain. We will also develop experiments in controlled conditions on different species of bees, syrphid flies, moths and butterflies, and collect in silico data on their traits and toxicity of pesticides. With WildPosh, we aim to achieve the following objectives: 1. Determining the real-world agrochemical exposure profile of wild pollinators at landscape level, within and among sites; 2. Using integrated and controlled laboratory and semi-field experiments to characterize causal relationships between pesticides and pollinator health; 3. Building an open database on pollinator traits/distribution and chemicals to define exposure and toxicity scenarios by developing databases on ecological traits and the spatial distribution of pollinators concerning their potential pesticide exposure; 4. Proposing integrated systems-based risk assessment tools for risk assessment for wild pollinators; and 5. Driving policy and practice through interactive innovation, meeting the need for monitoring tools, and novel and innovative screening protocols for practice and policymaker use.