Geographical and Seasonal Analysis of the Honeybee Microbiome

Almeida, Eduardo L.; Ribière, Céline; Frei, Werner; Kenny, Denis; Coffey, Mary F.; O’Toole, Paul W.

doi:10.1007/s00248-022-01986-x

Cited by 20 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…The gut microbiome of honeybees ( Apis mellifera ) was one of the first insect microbiome studied with NGS approaches, and it was proposed as a model for microbiome research [ 61 ]. The great attention and interest raised by the honeybee microbiome has led to a detailed knowledge on its acquirement, diversity, shaping by external factors [ 45 , 62 – 64 ], and on its function in relation to the brain-gut axis [ 42 , 65 ]. On the other hand, less is known for other pollinators and especially for solitary bees probably because of the difficulties in collection and study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The gut microbiome of solitary bees is mainly affected by pathogen assemblage and partially by land use

Landa

Alberoni

Baffoni

et al. 2023

Environmental Microbiome

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Pollinators, including solitary bees, are drastically declining worldwide. Among the factors contributing to this decline, bee pathogens and different land uses are of relevance. The link between the gut microbiome composition and host health has been recently studied for social pollinators (e.g. honeybees), whereas the information related to solitary bees is sparse. This work aimed at the characterization of the gut microbiome of the solitary bees Xylocopa augusti, Eucera fervens and Lasioglossum and attempted to correlate the gut microbial composition with the presence and load of different pathogens and land uses. Solitary bees were sampled in different sites (i.e. a farm, a natural reserve, and an urban plant nursery) showing different land uses. DNA was extracted from the gut, 16S rRNA gene amplified and sequenced. Eight pathogens, known for spillover from managed bees to wild ones, were quantified with qPCR. The results showed that the core microbiome profile of the three solitary bees significantly varied in the different species. Pseudomonas was found as the major core taxa in all solitary bees analyzed, whereas Lactobacillus, Spiroplasma and Sodalis were the second most abundant taxa in X. augusti, E. fervens and Lasioglossum, respectively. The main pathogens detected with qPCR were Nosema ceranae, Nosema bombi and Crithidia bombi, although differently abundant in the different bee species and sampling sites. Most microbial taxa did not show any correlation with the land use, apart from Snodgrassella and Nocardioides, showing higher abundances on less anthropized sites. Conversely, the pathogens species and load strongly affected the gut microbial composition, with Bifidobacterium, Apibacter, Serratia, Snodgrassella and Sodalis abundance that positively or negatively correlated with the detected pathogens load. Therefore, pathogens presence and load appear to be the main factor shaping the gut microbiome of solitary bees in Argentina.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The gut microbiome of solitary bees is mainly affected by pathogen assemblage and partially by land use

Landa

Alberoni

Baffoni

et al. 2023

Environmental Microbiome

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“…In both panels, the species are ordered within each group according to decreasing prevalence. with the time of the season (Almeida et al, 2023). In another study, the change was found to be very small (Subotic et al, 2019)-which the authors attributed to the high dominance of gut microbes in the overall microbiota of any bee individual (Subotic et al, 2019) and to the proposed stability of gut microbiota over time (Corby-Harris et al, 2014).…”

Section: Spatiotemporal Variation In the Realized Eltonian Niche Of H...mentioning

confidence: 94%

“…to shape the bee microbiota with varying strengths, with impacts ranging from mild (Almeida et al, 2023) to strong (Aizenberg-Gershtein et al, 2013;Muñoz-Colmenero et al, 2020;Subotic et al, 2019). Landscape attributes have also been shown to affect the gut microbiome (Jones et al, 2018).…”

Section: Spatiotemporal Variation In the Realized Eltonian Niche Of H...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of seasonality in shaping the interactions of honeybees with other taxa

Wirta,

Jones,

Peña‐Aguilera

et al. 2023

Ecology and Evolution

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The Eltonian niche of a species is defined as its set of interactions with other taxa. How this set varies with biotic, abiotic and human influences is a core question of modern ecology. In seasonal environments, the realized Eltonian niche is likely to vary due to periodic changes in the occurrence and abundance of interaction partners and changes in species behavior and preferences. Also, human management decisions may leave strong imprints on species interactions. To compare the impact of seasonality to that of management effects, honeybees provide an excellent model system. Based on DNA traces of interaction partners archived in honey, we can infer honeybee interactions with floral resources and microbes in the surrounding habitats, their hives, and themselves. Here, we resolved seasonal and management‐based impacts on honeybee interactions by sampling beehives repeatedly during the honey‐storing period of honeybees in Finland. We then use a genome‐skimming approach to identify the taxonomic contents of the DNA in the samples. To compare the effects of the season to the effects of location, management, and the colony itself in shaping honeybee interactions, we used joint species distribution modeling. We found that honeybee interactions with other taxa varied greatly among taxonomic and functional groups. Against a backdrop of wide variation in the interactions documented in the DNA content of honey from bees from different hives, regions, and beekeepers, the imprint of the season remained relatively small. Overall, a honey‐based approach offers unique insights into seasonal variation in the identity and abundance of interaction partners among honeybees. During the summer, the availability and use of different interaction partners changed substantially, but hive‐ and taxon‐specific patterns were largely idiosyncratic as modified by hive management. Thus, the beekeeper and colony identity are as important determinants of the honeybee's realized Eltonian niche as is seasonality.

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“…Since worker age (Hroncova et al, 2015) and seasonality (Almeida et al, 2022) showed effects on honeybee gut microbiome, these factors need to be considered in the data interpretation. Additionally, the limited sampling for each local population might also under-estimate the gut microbe diversity and bring bias into intra-colony variation (Rothman et al, 2018).…”

Section: Gut Microbiome Evolution Under Local Diet Shift In Asian Hon...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Significant compositional and functional variation reveals the patterns of gut microbiota evolution among the widespread Asian honeybee populations

Tang²,

Hu³

et al. 2022

Front. Microbiol.

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The gut microbiome is a crucial element that facilitates a host’s adaptation to a changing environment. Compared to the western honeybee Apis mellifera, the Asian honeybee, Apis cerana populations across its natural range remain mostly semi-feral and are less affected by bee management, which provides a good system to investigate how gut microbiota evolve under environmental heterogeneity on large geographic scales. We compared and analyzed the gut microbiomes of 99 Asian honeybees, from genetically diverged populations covering 13 provinces across China. Bacterial composition varied significantly across populations at phylotype, sequence-discrete population (SDP), and strain levels, but with extensive overlaps, indicating that the diversity of microbial community among A. cerana populations is driven by nestedness. Pollen diets were significantly correlated with both the composition and function of the gut microbiome. Core bacteria, Gilliamella and Lactobacillus Firm-5, showed antagonistic turnovers and contributed to the enrichment in carbohydrate transport and metabolism. By feeding and inoculation bioassays, we confirmed that the variations in pollen polysaccharide composition contributed to the trade-off of these core bacteria. Progressive change, i.e., nestedness, is the foundation of gut microbiome evolution among the Asian honeybee. Such a transition during the co-diversification of gut microbiomes is affected by environmental factors, diets in general, and pollen polysaccharides in particular.

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Geographical and Seasonal Analysis of the Honeybee Microbiome

Cited by 20 publications

References 54 publications

The gut microbiome of solitary bees is mainly affected by pathogen assemblage and partially by land use

The gut microbiome of solitary bees is mainly affected by pathogen assemblage and partially by land use

The role of seasonality in shaping the interactions of honeybees with other taxa

Significant compositional and functional variation reveals the patterns of gut microbiota evolution among the widespread Asian honeybee populations

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