Rothman Jason A, Cox-Foster Diana L, Andrikopoulos Corey, McFrederick Quinn S
Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
Insects. 2020 Sep 20;11(9):645. doi: 10.3390/insects11090645.
Mounting evidence suggests that microbes found in the pollen provisions of wild and solitary bees are important drivers of larval development. As these microbes are also known to be transmitted via the environment, most likely from flowers, the diet breadth of a bee may affect the diversity and identity of the microbes that occur in its pollen provisions. Here, we tested the hypothesis that, due to the importance of floral transmission of microbes, diet breadth affects pollen provision microbial community composition. We collected pollen provisions at four sites from the polylectic bee and the oligolectic bee We used high-throughput sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene to characterize the bacteria found in these provisions. We found minimal overlap in the specific bacterial variants in pollen provisions across the host species, even when the bees were constrained to foraging from the same flowers in cages at one site. Similarly, there was minimal overlap in the specific bacterial variants across sites, even within the same host species. Together, these findings highlight the importance of environmental transmission and host specific sorting influenced by diet breadth for microbes found in pollen provisions. Future studies addressing the functional consequences of this filtering, along with tests for differences between more species of oligoletic and polylectic bees will provide rich insights into the microbial ecology of solitary bees.
越来越多的证据表明，在野生独居蜜蜂的花粉储备中发现的微生物是幼虫发育的重要驱动因素。由于这些微生物也已知是通过环境传播的，很可能来自花朵，蜜蜂的饮食广度可能会影响其花粉储备中出现的微生物的多样性和种类。在这里，我们检验了这样一个假设，即由于微生物通过花朵传播的重要性，饮食广度会影响花粉储备微生物群落的组成。我们从四个地点收集了多食性蜜蜂和寡食性蜜蜂的花粉储备。我们使用细菌16S rRNA基因的高通量测序来表征这些储备中发现的细菌。我们发现，即使蜜蜂被限制在一个地点的笼子里从同一花朵觅食，不同宿主物种的花粉储备中特定细菌变体的重叠也很少。同样，即使在同一宿主物种内，不同地点的特定细菌变体的重叠也很少。这些发现共同强调了环境传播和受饮食广度影响的宿主特异性筛选对花粉储备中微生物的重要性。未来研究这种筛选的功能后果，以及对更多寡食性和多食性蜜蜂物种之间差异的测试，将为独居蜜蜂的微生物生态学提供丰富的见解。
