Pesticides reshape honey bee gut microbes

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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

Kakumanu ML, Reeves AM, Anderson TD, et al. · Frontiers in microbiology · 2016

doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01255 Read the full paper ↗166 citationscc by

Study at a glance

Design: Animal / in-vitro — In-hive pesticide exposures across sites; 16S and ITS pyrosequencing of foragers and brood
N: N=24 · 24 sequenced samples (4 treatments × 3 sites × 2 bee types), each pooled from five bees
Population: Honey bees (Apis mellifera) exposed to in-hive pesticides
Outcome: Gut bacterial and fungal community composition under pesticide treatments

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Pesticides reshape honey bee gut microbes

These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.

Honey bees (Apis mellifera).

As pollinators and honey producers, honey bees (Apis mellifera) are vital to global agriculture.

Pesticides may alter microbiome structure/function and gut health.

But pesticides and in-hive medications may alter the structure and function of the microbiome and thus affect gut function and overall healt

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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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Common questions

Host?

Honey bees.

Markers?

16S and ITS.

Exposure?

In-hive pesticides.

Result?

Microbiome composition shifts.