Department of Entomology, University of California, 139 Entomology Building, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA.
Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, University of California, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA.
Microb Ecol. 2018 Oct;76(3):814-824. doi: 10.1007/s00248-018-1151-y. Epub 2018 Feb 3.
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) provide vital pollination services for a variety of agricultural crops around the world and are known to host a consistent core bacterial microbiome. This symbiotic microbial community is essential to many facets of bee health, including likely nutrient acquisition, disease prevention and optimal physiological function. Being that the bee microbiome is likely involved in the digestion of nutrients, we either provided or excluded honey bee colonies from supplemental floral forage before being used for almond pollination. We then used 16S rRNA gene sequencing to examine the effects of forage treatment on the bees' microbial gut communities over four months. In agreement with previous studies, we found that the honey bee gut microbiota is quite stable over time. Similarly, we compared the gut communities of bees from separate colonies and sisters sampled from within the same hive over four months. Surprisingly, we found that the gut microbial communities of individual sisters from the same colony can exhibit as much variation as bees from different colonies. Supplemental floral forage had a subtle effect on the composition of the microbiome during the month of March only, with strains of Gilliamella apicola, Lactobacillus, and Bartonella being less proportionally abundant in bees exposed to forage in the winter. Collectively, our findings show that there is unexpected longitudinal variation within the gut microbial communities of sister honey bees and that supplemental floral forage can subtly alter the microbiome of managed honey bees.
蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）为世界各地的各种农业作物提供重要的授粉服务，并且已知其宿主具有一致的核心细菌微生物组。这种共生微生物群落对蜜蜂健康的许多方面至关重要，包括可能的营养获取、疾病预防和最佳生理功能。由于蜜蜂微生物组可能参与营养物质的消化，因此我们在用于杏仁授粉之前，要么为蜜蜂群提供补充花源，要么不提供。然后，我们使用 16S rRNA 基因测序技术，在四个月的时间里检查了饲料处理对蜜蜂肠道微生物群落的影响。与先前的研究一致，我们发现蜜蜂肠道微生物群在很长一段时间内非常稳定。同样，我们比较了来自不同蜂群的蜜蜂以及在同一蜂巢内采集的姐妹的肠道群落，四个月。令人惊讶的是，我们发现来自同一蜂群的个体姐妹的肠道微生物群落的变化程度与来自不同蜂群的蜜蜂一样大。补充花源在三月份仅对微生物组的组成有微妙的影响，在冬季暴露于花源的蜜蜂中，Gilliamella apicola、Lactobacillus 和 Bartonella 的菌株比例相对较少。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，姐妹蜜蜂的肠道微生物群落存在意想不到的纵向变化，并且补充花源可以微妙地改变管理蜜蜂的微生物组。
