Gut microbiota composition is associated with environmental landscape in honey bees

Abstract

There is growing recognition that the gut microbial community regulates a wide variety of important functions in its animal hosts, including host health. However, the complex interactions between gut microbes and environment are still unclear. Honey bees are ecologically and economically important pollinators that host a core gut microbial community that is thought to be constant across populations. Here, we examined whether the composition of the gut microbial community of honey bees is affected by the environmental landscape the bees are exposed to. We placed honey bee colonies reared under identical conditions in two main landscape types for 6 weeks: either oilseed rape farmland or agricultural farmland distant to fields of flowering oilseed rape. The gut bacterial communities of adult bees from the colonies were then characterized and compared based on amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. While previous studies have delineated a characteristic core set of bacteria inhabiting the honey bee gut, our results suggest that the broad environment that bees are exposed to has some influence on the relative abundance of some members of that microbial community. This includes known dominant taxa thought to have functions in nutrition and health. Our results provide evidence for an influence of landscape exposure on honey bee microbial community and highlight the potential effect of exposure to different environmental parameters, such as forage type and neonicotinoid pesticides, on key honey bee gut bacteria. This work emphasizes the complexity of the relationship between the host, its gut bacteria, and the environment and identifies target microbial taxa for functional analyses.

Effect of water and resource availability on ant feeding preferences: a field experiment on the Mediterranean ant Crematogaster scutellaris

“…Notably similar bacterial communities have been found for workers from different populations and regions (Jeyaprakash et al 2003;Mohr and Tebbe 2006;Cox-Foster et al 2007;Martinson et al 2011;Moran et al 2012;Sabree et al 2012). However, in a recent study we demonstrated that some dominant members of the honey bee gut bacterial community differ in relative abundance when bees are exposed to different environmental landscapes (Jones et al 2017). Thus, there may also be differences in the gut community when bees are exposed to different local environments due to the different behavioural tasks they perform.…”

“…Interestingly in the context of the different behaviours performed by workers, B. apis has recently been shown to encode genes which may be involved in the degradation of secondary plant metabolites (Segers et al 2017), and this taxon has also been found to differ in abundance depending on the landscape type the worker honey bees are exposed to (Jones et al 2017). L. kunkeei on the other hand, a dominant crop (foregut) species rare in the gut, but also common in materials in the honey bee environment, was found to be higher in abundance in the gut communities of foraging workers than workers performing nursing tasks.…”

“…Gut dissection and DNA extractions of individual guts was performed as outlined in Jones et al 2017. Illumina libraries were prepared following the method outlined by Caporaso et al 2012, by the Centre for Genomic Research, University of Liverpool.…”

The gut microbiome is associated with behavioural task in honey bees

“…Gut dissection and DNA extractions of individual guts was performed as outlined in Jones et al 2017. Illumina libraries were prepared following the method outlined by Caporaso et al 2012, by the Centre for Genomic Research, University of Liverpool.…”

“…Notably similar bacterial communities have been found for workers from different populations and regions (Jeyaprakash et al 2003; Mohr and Tebbe 2006; Cox-Foster et al 2007; Martinson et al 2011; Moran et al 2012; Sabree et al 2012). However, in a recent study we demonstrated that some dominant members of the honey bee gut bacterial community differ in relative abundance when bees are exposed to different environmental landscapes (Jones et al 2017). Thus, there may also be differences in the gut community when bees are exposed to different local environments due to the different behavioural tasks they perform.…”