Pesticides reshape honey bee gut microbes
In-hive pesticide exposures change honey bee gut bacterial and fungal community composition.
Source
Honey Bee Gut Microbiome Is Altered by In-Hive Pesticide Exposures
What they did
Exposed bees to in-hive pesticides across sites, then pyrosequenced 16S and ITS amplicons from foragers and brood.
What they found
Hundreds of bacterial OTUs and altered relative abundances under pesticide treatments versus controls; core taxa include Firmicutes/proteobacteria lineages.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Does not prove every abundance shift causes colony collapse; sequencing is compositional.
Key terms
- Gut microbiome
- Microbial community in the bee gut.
- 16S rRNA
- Bacterial marker gene amplicon.
- ITS
- Fungal internal transcribed spacer marker.
- OTU
- Operational taxonomic unit cluster.
- In-hive pesticide
- Chemicals applied inside colonies.
- Apis mellifera
- Western honey bee.
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Topic:
Common questions
Host?
Honey bees.
Markers?
16S and ITS.
Exposure?
In-hive pesticides.
Result?
Microbiome composition shifts.
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