Orlova Margarita, Porter Monique, Hines Heather M, Amsalem Etya
Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Department of Biology and Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, Utica, NY 13502, USA.
Animals (Basel). 2023 May 17;13(10):1656. doi: 10.3390/ani13101656.
, a microsporidian parasite (previously classified as ), has been implicated in the decline of wild bumble bee species in North America. Previous studies examining its influence on colony performance have displayed variable results, from extremely detrimental effects to no observable influence, and little is known about the effects it has on individuals during the winter diapause, a bottleneck for survival in many annual pollinators. Here, we examined the effect of infection, body size, and mass on diapause survival in gynes. We demonstrate that gyne survival length in diapause is negatively affected by symptomatic infection of the maternal colony but does not correlate with individual pathogen load. Our findings further indicate that increased body mass offers a protective effect against mortality during diapause in infected, but not in healthy, gynes. This suggests that access to adequate nutritional resources prior to diapause might offset the harmful effect of infection.
一种微孢子虫寄生虫（以前归类为 ）被认为与北美野生大黄蜂物种的数量下降有关。先前研究其对蜂群表现的影响时，结果各不相同，从极其有害的影响到没有可观察到的影响，而且对于它在冬季滞育期间对个体的影响知之甚少，而冬季滞育是许多一年生传粉者生存的瓶颈。在这里，我们研究了感染、体型和体重对雌蜂滞育存活的影响。我们证明，滞育期间雌蜂的存活时长受到母体蜂群有症状感染的负面影响，但与个体病原体负荷无关。我们的研究结果进一步表明，体重增加对受感染雌蜂滞育期间的死亡有保护作用，但对健康雌蜂没有。这表明在滞育前获得充足的营养资源可能会抵消感染的有害影响。
