[Mitarbeiter.zoologie] Antw: Positive Correlation between Pesticide Consumption and Longevity in Solitary Bees

[Julia Osterman]

Dear all, Hi Ecki,
I was reading the article this morning and I must say, I am quite upset.
But, I think first of all their statistical analysis looks to me robust and
they exclude "non-feeders", so that should be fine.

However, their title, their abstract, and their conclusions from what they
find are to me misleading. Especially in Corona times, we as researchers
should have realised how important it is to clearly communicate our
findings, as many journalists are not trained to be able to correctly
interpret papers. Anyway, my critics are the following and I almost think
we should write a response letter.

Their findings are*: NO differences* between treatment groups on survival.
This means the insecticide nor the herbicide nor the combination reduced
survival compared to the control group. As a consequence, I would have
chosen a title representing this result, as to me it seems like that was
the reason to make this study.

They also find no difference between treatment groups on how much the bees
have eaten BUT they find that *body size *affected how much the mason bees
ate: "*however, emergence mass had a significant positive effect on
consumption with heavier bees consuming more sucrose-solution*". This means
those bees that were bigger ate more. And then they tested if consumption
affected longevity and in all groups, they find a positive correlation
between consumption and longevity. IN ALL. No difference between treatment
groups again. To me, this means either bees that eat a lot survive longer
or those that are bigger survive longer, no matter if they got a pesticide
or not. But in the abstract, the authors write: "*As no significant
difference in daily food consumption were observed across treatment groups,
increasing food intake can be excluded as a factor leading to prolonged
survival.*" This is just against my logic but maybe I am wrong.

Also, they write in the simple abstract that their data suggests a possibly
neglected trade-off between survival and reproduction in insect toxicology.
I don't see how they came up with this?

Maybe I am wrong, but this paper is a good example of miss-interpretations
of results.

What do you think?
Thanks, Andreia for sending it around!
Julia

Am Di., 24. Nov. 2020 um 19:30 Uhr schrieb Eckart Stolle <
eckart.stolle at zoologie.uni-halle.de>:

> looks like a nice paper for the connaisseurs of statistical fishing.
>
>
> Probably any cloud of datapoints would give them a positive correlation
> if they still include the bunch of non-eating weird ones.
>
> ... the headlines will be: "See! Whats we [Bayer] say? Pesticide are
> even good for bees!"
>
>
>
> ================================
> Dr. Eckart Stolle
> Institut für Biology
> Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
> Hoher Weg 8, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany
> eckart.stolle at zoologie.uni-halle.de
> 0049 345 55 26502
> Fax 0049 345 55 27428
> ================================
> >>> Andreia Teixeira <andreia.teixeira90 at gmail.com> 24.11.20 12.24 Uhr
> >>>
> Dear all,
>
> The paper attached may be of interest, probably some of you have seen it
> already.
>
> Best,
> Andreia
> --
>
> PhD Student
> Martin-Luther University
> Institute of Biology
> General Zoology Group
>
> Hoher Weg 8, 06120 Halle, Germany
>
>
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>


-- 
Julia Osterman
PhD candidate
General Zoology
Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
jul.osterman at gmail.com

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH - UFZ
Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany
julia.osterman at ufz.de <julia.goss at ufz.de>
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