Noninsecticides alter insect behavior

While the prospect of fewer mosquitoes buzzing around might be compelling, insects play a crucial role in maintaining our ecosystems and supporting agriculture. Widespread use of insecticides has been implicated in the decline of beneficial insect populations , but new research published in Science suggests that hundreds of noninsecticidal agricultural chemicals could be negatively affecting insect populations too (2024, DOI: 10.1126/science.ado0251 ) . Justin Crocker , senior author on the paper and an evolutionary and developmental biologist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) , led a research team to investigate how more than 1,000 agricultural chemicals affect insect behavior. The team exposed Drosophila melanogaster , the common fruit fly and a model organism for genetics, to insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and other chemicals and looked for behavioral changes such as modified crawling, egg-laying, and developmental patterns. “The big push here for us was actually looking at the sublethal effects of