Bees play a fundamental role in the pollination of cultivated plants and natural ecosystems and can act as pollinators of almost 90 % of the world's flowering plants (D’Avila, Marchini, 2005).

Among the existing bee families, the Apidae stands out for its wide diversity of species and ecological habits (Michener, 2007). Within this family is the Meliponini tribe, which is made up of stingless social bees (meliponids), named after their absence or atrophied sting (Michener, 2007), native to the tropics and subtropics of the planet (Ayala et al., 2013). Scaptotrigona postica (Latreille, 1807), popularly known as ‘mandaguari’, for example, is a meliponid species that lives in tree hollows and is found from Mexico to Brazil (Nogueira-Neto, 1997). It is responsible for pollinating agricultural crops such as cashew, strawberry, pitanga, açaí, among others (Souza et al., 2015).

Despite the great importance of bees, these pollinators have suffered several threats due to different factors, such as habitat loss and climate change (Jaffé et al., 2019), as well as competition for resources (Hung et al., 2019), resulting in a worldwide decrease in populations (Hung et al., 2019, Jaffé et al., 2019). In addition, human action in conjunction with the inappropriate use of pesticides is among the factors with the greatest impact on the threat to the biodiversity of these insects (Dudley and Alexander, 2017).

Considering the aforementioned information and the importance of guaranteeing crop yields, it´s a necessary attention in the development and discovery of new synthetic substances for pesticides (Godfray et al., 2010). Flupyradifurone, for example, is a systemic insecticide, which belongs to the chemical group butenolides (Nauen et al., 2014). Like neonicotinoids and sulfoximines, this insecticide acts on nAChRs and is used to control agricultural pests such as mites, aphids and whiteflies (Nauen et al., 2014).

Since 2014, flupyradifurone has been registered in more than 50 countries (EFSA Panel on Plant Protection Products and their Residues PPR et al., 2022) and is permitted for use on a wide range of crops such as soybeans, coffee, citrus, cotton, passion fruit, peppers, eggplants and peppers, among others (Nauen et al., 2014, Bayer, 2022). Despite being considered a safer alternative and less toxic to the environment when compared to other neurotoxic insecticides, it is still necessary to understand the real impact of flupyradifurone on pollinators (Siviter et al., 2024). When bees are exposed to different concentrations of this insecticide, they can suffer different effects such as reduced nesting success (Siviter et al., 2024), impaired foraging efficiency (Hesselbach and Scheiner, 2019, Siviter et al., 2024), increased mortality (Al Naggar and Baer, 2019, Hesselbach and Scheiner, 2019, Siviter et al., 2024), altered expression of immune and detoxification genes (Al Naggar; Baer, 2019), among other effects.

In addition, many of the studies with the insecticide flupyradifurone have been carried out with Apis mellifera (Tosi; Nieh, 2019), but there is a possibility that native bees such as Scaptotrigona postica have contact with this substance during pollination of crops such as citrus and strawberries, where this insecticide can be used (Bayer, 2022, Nauen et al., 2014, Souza et al., 2015).

Furthermore, there are still unknown effects of flupyradifurone on pollinating insects. Thus, the present work aims to fill gaps in knowledge regarding the impacts of flupyradifurone on native stingless bees, evaluating the influence of chronic oral exposure to an environmentally relevant concentration of the insecticide on the longevity and locomotion behavior of Scaptotrigona postica, in addition to the impacts of this insecticide on the brain and intestine of bees.