Reacción a "Reaction to study concluding that glyphosate affects the thermoregulation of bumblebee colonies"

Although field studies show that the widespread use of chemicals such as herbicides or pesticides has a clear negative effect on biodiversity, trials to approve their use continue to indicate that their toxicity on species important for ecosystem functioning, such as bees, is low.

However, the study by Weidenmüller et al. uses an elegant experimental design to show that very small effects of glyphosate, a controversial herbicide, at the level of isolated bumblebee individuals have much more serious repercussions at the colony level. 

Bumblebees live in colonies of hundreds of workers, and so the effects on their populations have to be measured at this level, and it is irrelevant that a chemical is not lethal to single individuals if it is reducing the ability of the colony to survive. In this case, glyphosate reduces the ability of bumblebees to keep the colony warm, and this directly affects their ability to reproduce. 

Nature is a complex system and we cannot understand how it works just by studying its parts; we need to understand how it works as a whole.