ApisTox: a new benchmark dataset for the classification of small molecules toxicity on honey bees

TL;DR

ApisTox is a comprehensive, curated dataset designed to improve the classification of pesticide toxicity to honey bees, supporting research, policy-making, and benchmarking in environmental and cheminformatics fields.

Contribution

It introduces ApisTox, a new benchmark dataset that consolidates toxicity data for chemicals affecting honey bees, surpassing previous datasets in scope and detail.

Findings

Provides extensive toxicity data for pesticides and chemicals affecting honey bees.

Enables benchmarking of molecular property prediction methods.

Supports development of bee conservation policies.

Abstract

The global decline in bee populations poses significant risks to agriculture, biodiversity, and environmental stability. To bridge the gap in existing data, we introduce ApisTox, a comprehensive dataset focusing on the toxicity of pesticides to honey bees (Apis mellifera). This dataset combines and leverages data from existing sources such as ECOTOX and PPDB, providing an extensive, consistent, and curated collection that surpasses the previous datasets. ApisTox incorporates a wide array of data, including toxicity levels for chemicals, details such as time of their publication in literature, and identifiers linking them to external chemical databases. This dataset may serve as an important tool for environmental and agricultural research, but also can support the development of policies and practices aimed at minimizing harm to bee populations. Finally, ApisTox offers a unique resource for benchmarking molecular property prediction methods on agrochemical compounds, facilitating advancements in both environmental science and cheminformatics. This makes it a valuable tool for both academic research and practical applications in bee conservation.