Dicamba: The Silent Killer

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 Imagine if in the middle of the night, your home that you have grown to love was taken away from you. That is what many insects that reside in agricultural fields discovered in 2017. Many farmers had begun to use a herbicide known as Dicamba in replacement of Roundup, to counteract the resistance that some plants had formed against the herbicide. All seemed to be going well, as the unwanted plants in the fields began to die off and only leave the valuable crops. Then trouble started to set in. As time wore on, the farmers in other fields began to notice that some of their crops were being killed as well. The same was true for those that had gardens or small trees that were neighboring the field that was sprayed with Dicamba.


Dicamba drift on Soybeans. Courtesy of University of Arkansas

Once the herbicide was sprayed on the plants, it was found to vaporize into the air before it was able to absorb into the soil. This vapor would then drift over to other fields, gardens, and yards to settle onto other plants and absorb into that soil, killing the plants. This phenomenon was soon given the name “dicamba drift”, and forced many farmers to lose the crops that they had in their fields. Not only were the crops affected by the drift of the herbicide, but the insects were also affected. The insects that once inhabited those plants, trees, and other vegetation were left without a place where they could protect themselves from predators. Another way that the use of this herbicide has negatively impacted the insects is through the roles of pollination. For many insects, pollination is their way of obtaining nutrients, and the pollen is attached to their head or other parts of their body. When the herbicide is applied and drifts to other plants and kills them, these plants were once pollinators that fed the insects of the air. Without these pollinators, many of the things that we enjoy today would not be possible. 


Dicamba has been shown to have a negative impact on two species of insects. While there are many more insects that have been affected by the use of this herbicide, the two following examples show what harmful and deadly impacts that the herbicide can have on a population. The first of these examples is with the native lady beetle, scientific name Coleomegilla maculata. When these beetles were exposed to the dicamba herbicide, a study showed that the survival rates of the population went down and the population was feminized (Lundgren). The study was performed on a population of the native lady beetles that were exposed to the herbicide at the label rates of the herbicide. The label rate signifies the rate at which the label suggests the herbicide is used for the specific circumstance that is being conducted. 



The other main insect group that Dicamba has been shown to negatively impact are the honey bees. Several studies were performed to show the toxicity of Dicamba on the honey bee population. Through all of the studies, it was shown that it is not always lethal to the bees, but can have other negative impacts that affect their way of life. Once a honey bee comes into contact with Dicamba, it was shown that it can disrupt the bees behavior, reproduction, navigation, and many other operations that the bees use to survive. A way that bees are exposed to the herbicides is through their beehives. It has been shown that herbicide is present in the honeycombs of bees when they are exposed to an area that was sprayed with Dicamba. And to think that all of this could have been avoided if Roundup wasn't overly used.








Picture Credits

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/01/487809643/crime-in-the-fields-how-monsanto-and-scofflaw-farmers-hurt-soybeans-in-arkansas

https://www.beeculture.com/dicamba-and-bees/


Sources

https://www.beeculture.com/dicamba-and-bees/

https://usrtk.org/pesticides/dicamba/



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