Chennai: It turns out that sleep is essential for insects too. However, what is preventing them from getting their required sleep is the presence of pesticides.
Pesticides used on plants can make flies, like bees, mad without sleep, say researchers who studied the impact of common pesticides on the insect brain.
Academicians at the University of Bristol have found that neonicotinoid insecticides prevents insects from getting sleep.
Two studies by scientists at Bristol’s Schools of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience and Biological Sciences have shown these insecticides affect the amount of sleep taken by both bumblebees and fruit flies, which may help us understand why insect pollinators are vanishing from the wild.
Dr Kiah Tasman, Teaching Associate in the School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience and lead author of the studies, said, “The neonicotinoids we tested had a big effect on the amount of sleep taken by both flies and bees. If an insect was exposed to a similar amount as it might experience on a farm where the pesticide had been applied, it slept less, and its daily behavioural rhythms were knocked out of sync with the normal 24-hour cycle of day and night”.
The fruit fly study has been published in Scientific Reports. As well as finding that typical agricultural concentrations of neonicotinoids ruined the flies’ ability to remember, the researchers also saw changes in the clock in the fly brain which controls its 24-hour cycle of day and night.
Dr James Hodge, Associate Professor in Neuroscience in the School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience and senior author for the study, said, “Being able to tell time is important for knowing when to be awake and forage, and it looked like these drugged insects were unable to sleep. We know quality sleep is important for insects, just as it is for humans, for their health and forming lasting memories”. Neonicotinoids are currently banned in the EU, it is learnt.
