Biology subjects

Herbertsson, L.

Publications and source records attributed to Herbertsson, L..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

MetaBeeAI: an AI pipeline for full-text systematic reviews in biology

The volume and complexity of scientific literature are expanding rapidly, making it increasingly difficult to extract and synthesise information across studies. This challenge is particularly acute in the biological sciences, where evidence spans multiple levels of organisation and heterogeneous experimental designs. Large Language Model (LLM) pipelines offer a scalable route to evidence synthesis, but many existing approaches lack transparency, modularity, and effective mechanisms for human oversight. We present MetaBeeAI, an open-source, modular pipeline that integrates established LLM techniques into a coherent, auditable workflow for structured data extraction in biology. MetaBeeAI combines modular prompting, multi-pass extraction, and expert-in-the-loop validation within an interface that presents model outputs alongside source text, enabling inspection, correction, and iterative refinement. The pipeline produces machine-readable records of prompts, configurations, and expert annotations, supporting reproducibility and continuous improvement. We apply MetaBeeAI to 924 research papers on bees and pesticides, extracting structured information on species, compounds, exposure designs, and experimental context. Evaluation demonstrates improved consistency, convergence with expert judgement, and robustness across heterogeneous biological studies, highlighting the value of expert-guided refinement. MetaBeeAI provides a transparent and extensible framework for scalable evidence synthesis, supporting reliable integration of LLMs into biological research workflows.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Honeybee hive density has consequences for foraging bumblebees in Irish heathlands

Heathlands provide vital foraging resources for wild bumblebees, as well as managed honeybees that are brought to heathlands in late summer for heather honey production. With this increased honeybee activity, there is potential for competition for floral resources between honeybees and bumblebees. We studied how increasing number of honeybee hives in Irish upland heathlands, influenced honeybee abundance, nectar availability and bumblebee abundance, size and activity at two distances from the honeybee hives. In general, an increasing number of hives resulted in elevated honeybee abundance, and - while we observed no change in nectar volumes - an increase in flower-visitation activity (flowers/minute) by individual bumblebee workers. Furthermore, bumblebee worker size declined with hive density, suggesting that larger workers - which have a longer foraging range - may have foraged further from the hives, or possibly that smaller workers may have been forced participate in foraging to compensate for smaller rewards. This highlights the need to consider interactions between wild and managed bees for floral resources in land management and conservation to ensure the protection of wild bumblebee populations and the continued productive management of honeybee populations for profitable honey production.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2023

Moving Past Neonicotinoids and Honeybees: A Systematic Review of Existing Research on Other Insecticides and Bees

Synthetic pesticides are used widely in agriculture to protect crops from pests, weeds and disease. However, their use also comes with a range of environmental concerns. One of which is effects of insecticides on non-target organisms such as bees, who provide pollination services for crops and wild plants. This systematic literature review quantifies the existing research on bees and insecticides broadly, and then focuses more specifically on non-neonicotinoid insecticides and non-honeybees. We find that articles on honeybees (Apis sp.) and insecticides account for 80% of all research, with all other bees combined making up 20%. Neonicotinoids were studied in 34% of articles across all bees and were the most widely studied insecticide class for non-honeybees overall, with almost three times as many studies than the second most studied class. Of non-neonicotinoid insecticide classes and non-honeybees; the most studied were pyrethroids and organophosphates followed by carbamates, and the most widely represented bee taxa were bumblebees (Bombus), followed by leaf-cutter bees (Megachile) and mason bees (Osmia). Research has taken place across several countries, with the highest numbers of articles from Brazil and the US, and with notable gaps from countries in Asia, Africa and Oceania. Mortality was the most studied effect type, while sub-lethal effects such as on behaviour were less studied. Few studies tested how insecticides were influenced by other multiple pressures, such as climate change and co-occurring pesticides (cocktail effects). As anthropogenic pressures do not occur in isolation, we suggest that future research also addresses these knowledge gaps. Given the changing global patterns in insecticide use, and the increasing inclusion of both non-honeybees and sub-lethal effects in pesticide risk assessment, there is a need for expanding research beyond current state to ensure a strong scientific evidence base for the development of risk assessment and associated policy.

ecology↗