Gay Claire, Cochard Précillia, Thouin Julien, Morin Elie, Moreau Fabienne, Poirot Benjamin
Apilab, Lagord, France.
ADNid - Qualtech Groupe, Montferrier-sur-Lez, France.
J Insect Sci. 2025 Jul 15;25(4). doi: 10.1093/jisesa/ieaf067.
The declining diversity of pollinators is a major threat to ecosystem conservation, pollination services, and global food security. Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) dominate managed pollination, but their dominance can affect other pollinators. Competition for resources can lead to decreased foraging success and survival rates for other bee species, including other eusocial bees such as bumble bees. This study explores the floral diet of honey bees and buff-tailed bumble bees (Bombus terrestris L.) using metabarcoding of honey (for honey bees) and of wax pots' contents (for bumble bees), based on 3 molecular markers (ITS2, trnL g-h, and trnL c-h) in Médoc, France. Molecular markers detected different species pools, indicating a high diversity of plants visited by both species. The 'marker' effect was more important than the 'pollinator' effect in distinguishing plant taxa. The Schoener index revealed a diet overlap in plant taxa used by honey bees and bumble bees, but the value was highly dependent on the molecular marker. Thus, metabarcoding on different biological matrices for both species proved to be efficient, despite some biases. Although the matrices enabled avoiding capturing individuals and disturbing colonies, and were easy to sample, comparisons of results between 2 different matrices should be made with caution due to different storage and consumption strategies used by both studied bees. Nonetheless, this study provides a fast and inexpensive approach to study eusocial bees floral resource sharing, and gives insights to improve metabarcoding effectiveness in order to better describe dietary niche of eusocial pollinators by noninvasive sampling.
传粉者多样性的下降是对生态系统保护、授粉服务和全球粮食安全的重大威胁。蜜蜂（西方蜜蜂）在人工授粉中占主导地位，但其主导地位可能会影响其他传粉者。对资源的竞争可能导致其他蜜蜂物种，包括其他群居性蜜蜂如熊蜂的觅食成功率和存活率下降。本研究基于法国梅多克地区的3个分子标记（ITS2、trnL g-h和trnL c-h），通过对蜂蜜（针对蜜蜂）和蜡罐内容物（针对熊蜂）进行代谢条形码分析，探究了蜜蜂和 buff-tailed 熊蜂（Bombus terrestris L.）的花类食物。分子标记检测到不同的物种库，表明这两个物种访问的植物具有高度多样性。在区分植物分类群方面，“标记”效应比“传粉者”效应更重要。Schoener指数揭示了蜜蜂和熊蜂使用的植物分类群存在饮食重叠，但该值高度依赖于分子标记。因此，尽管存在一些偏差，但对这两个物种在不同生物基质上进行代谢条形码分析被证明是有效的。虽然这些基质能够避免捕获个体和干扰蜂群，并且易于采样，但由于两种研究蜜蜂使用不同的储存和消耗策略，在比较两种不同基质的结果时应谨慎。尽管如此，本研究提供了一种快速且廉价的方法来研究群居性蜜蜂的花资源共享，并为提高代谢条形码分析的有效性提供了见解，以便通过非侵入性采样更好地描述群居性传粉者的饮食生态位。
