Living on the edge: agrochemical pollutant contamination in tropical forest insects

Insects constitute most of all known species and play crucial roles in crop yields, food production and economies.

Tropical forests are global hotspots of insect diversity and provide many ecosystem services upon which humanity relies.

The Amazon, in particular, is the largest remaining tropical rainforest with an exceptional socio-ecological importance.

However, our ability to inform effective sustainable agriculture practices and environmental policies in the tropics is limited by two critical factors: [1] the scarcity of comprehensive assessments of insect biodiversity trends across the tropical forest and agricultural systems; and [2] limited knowledge of how landscape context, agricultural expansion, and agrochemical use drive pollutant contamination in tropical forest ecosystems.

Your PhD journey will lead you to the tropical forests of the Brazilian Amazon, where you will investigate agrochemical contamination in soils and insects to address key knowledge gaps that limit our ability to enhance sustainable agriculture in one of Earth's most biodiverse regions. You will study dung beetles and Meliponini stingless bees in farm-forest frontiers across three Amazonian regions.

Your research will [1] identify prevalent and high-risk pollutants for tropical forest soil and insects; [2] assess if pollution effects vary with landscape context, species and functional groups; [3] reveal the source, scale, and influence of pollutant contaminants in tropical forests; and [4] inform sustainable agriculture practices through insights gained from insect responses to diverse agricultural intensification scenarios.