Natalie Herrera Salazar

Pesticide use is a core strategy to control agricultural pests. Although international treaties and health recommendations call for banning hazardous pesticides, globally harmonized pesticide governance remains elusive. In Latin America (LATAM), the main net food exporter worldwide, agricultural pesticide use has increased by approximately 500% since 1990, compared with only approximately 3% in Europe. To assess the environmental and health rigour of LATAM’s pesticide legislation, we reviewed active ingredients (AIs) approved for ten major crops, and AIs banned at national level, in eight LATAM countries, assessed their hazardousness according to international standards, and legal status in the European Union (EU) and explored sources of variation in the number of AIs approved in LATAM. We identified 523 AIs approved and 236 banned in LATAM; approximately 50% of the approved and approximately 85% of the banned AIs in LATAM were either not approved or prohibited in the EU. Higher crop production and, to a lesser extent, export value were linked to more AIs approved in LATAM. These findings imply weaker regulatory frameworks for hazardous pesticides in LATAM, reflecting more permissive environmental policies compared with the EU. This reinforces the urgency of addressing asymmetries in pesticide governance and rethinking the prevailing agricultural paradigm.

Many primate species consume insects as part of their regular diet, yet few researchers have systematically collected them and analyzed their nutritional content. In this study, we developed protocols for collecting and analyzing prey items consumed by Weddell’s saddleback tamarins ( Leontocebus weddelli ), focusing on Orthoptera (crickets, grasshoppers, and katydids) which have been documented to be a central component of their diet. We used five methods to collect insect prey (pitfall, sheet, water, moth trap and manual capture) at a field site in northwestern Bolivia over the course of two months. In total, we collected 1302 insect samples, which we photographed, weighed, dried, and sorted into nine taxonomic groups (Acrididoidea/Eumastacoidea, Blattodea, Cicadoidea, Gryllidae, Lepidoptera, Mantodea, Phasmatodea Proscopiidae, and Tettigoniidae). We then analyzed the samples for their macro- and micro-nutrients. We found that the manual capture method was the most effective for capturing orthopterans. Our analyses showed that the samples primarily contained crude protein (52.63-78.54 % dry matter (PCDM)), chitin (12.05-27.26 PCDM) and fat (4.63-15.6 PCDM). The samples also contained high levels of a wide variety of minerals, including iron (42-655 parts per million (ppm)), zinc (85-554 ppm), and manganese (37-1200 ppm). These results indicate that orthopterans and other Neotropical insects can serve as important sources of macro- and micronutrients for tamarins. Given the variation in nutrient content among taxa, we recommend that researchers collect and analyze insects that most closely resemble the prey consumed by their study subjects to determine their nutritional value, and not assume equivalent nutritional composition across species, higher taxa, or life stages. Given the success of using night walks with manual capture for collecting Orthopterans, we recommend that other primatologists use this method to allow for cross-site comparisons of insect nutrition.