Impact of Nutritional Stress on Honeybee Gut Microbiota, Immunity, and Nosema ceranae Infection.

In this study, we examined whether nutritional stress affects honeybee gut microbiota, bee immunity, and infection by Nosema ceranae, under laboratory conditions. Consumption of Eucalyptus grandis pollen was used as a nutritionally poor-quality diet to study nutritional stress, in contraposition to the consumption of polyfloral pollen. Honeybees feed with Eucalyptus grandis pollen showed a lower abundance of Lactobacillus mellifer and Lactobacillus apis (Firm-4 and Firm-5, respectively) and Bifidobacterium spp. and a higher abundance of Bartonella apis, than honeybees fed with polyfloral pollen. Besides the impact of nutritional stress on honeybee microbiota, it also decreased the expression levels of vitellogenin and genes associated to immunity (glucose oxidase, hymenoptaecin and lysozyme). Finally, Eucalyptus grandis pollen favored the multiplication of Nosema ceranae. These results show that nutritional stress impacts the honeybee gut microbiota, having consequences on honeybee immunity and pathogen development. Those results may be useful to understand the influence of modern agriculture on honeybee health. PMID: 32666305 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Microbial Ecology - Category: Microbiology Authors: Tags: Microb Ecol Source Type: research