The role of the gut microbiome in health and disease of adult honey bee workers

Abstract

The role of the gut microbiome in animal health has become increasingly evident. Unlike most other insects, honey bees possess a highly conserved and specialized core gut microbiome, which consists of nine bacterial species and is acquired mostly through social transmission. Five of these species are ubiquitous in honey bees and are also present in bumble bees. Recent studies have shown that the bee gut microbiome plays a role in metabolism, immune function, growth and development, and protection against pathogens. Disruption of the gut microbiome has also been shown to have detrimental effects on bee health. Overall, evidence suggests that the gut microbiome plays an important role in bee health and disease.

Are you what you eat? A highly transient and prey‐influenced gut microbiome in the grey house spider Badumna longinqua

“…The gut microbiome of some taxa has been studied in great detail (Spor, Koren, & Ley, ). But, with some notable exceptions (Bourguignon et al, ; Raymann & Moran, ), surprisingly little is known about the gut microbiota of arthropods (Engel & Moran, ), the most diverse group in the animal kingdom (Giribet & Edgecombe, ). Current work on the arthropod gut microbiome yields contradictory results, finding host‐microbial interactions of widely varying levels of intimacy in different taxa.…”

The honey bee gut microbiota: strategies for study and characterization

“…mellifera commensals are not found in any other species, not even other bees (Kwong and Moran, ). These intimate symbiotic relationships lead to more rewarding partnerships than in less specialized microenvironments, but they also result in considerably more codependence (Powell et al ., ; Onchuru et al ., ; Raymann and Moran, ).…”

“…). A consistent and characteristic microbial community was discovered and the functional role of these microbial species is being explored (Raymann and Moran, ). Recent efforts have revealed distinct characteristics that make the Ap.…”

“…Ap. mellifera ’s microbial community has been found to be intricately tied to immune stimulation (Li et al ., ), metabolic functioning (Lee et al ., ; Wang et al ., ; Zheng et al ., ; ) and resistance to pathogens (Evans and Armstrong, ; Koch and Schmid‐Hempel, ; Schwarz et al ., ; Li et al ., ; Kwong et al ., ), which has been recently reviewed (Raymann and Moran, ).…”

Microbiomes and worker tasks

“…Concerns over bee health, responses of bees to diseases or parasites, and the impact on bees of the agricultural use of antimicrobials have generated much of attention given to bee microbiomes (Napflin and Schmid-Hempel 2018;Raymann and Moran 2018). While these topics are important, the microbiomes of social insects existed long before humans started to impact social species, and social insect microbiomes must have evolved alongside sociality.…”