Investigations of the Endobee and the Exobee: Bee-Microbe Interactions
Bees exist and forage in a world disrupted by humans. From landscape changes to pesticide sprays, we have etched our name across the globe with unabashed confidence, modifying over 95% of all terrestrial land. At the same time, we live on a planet dominated, not by humans, but by microbes. Microbial life easily outweighs animal life and has an impact on every biological and inorganic process the world over. To better understand how solitary bees and microbes interact and how human disruption may modulate this relationship, I investigated the microbial community in the pollen provision of solitary bees. The pollen provision microbiome is collected from the environment during foraging before being sealed into a brood cell with the developing larvae. While its exact role and interaction with developing bees is not entirely understood, the presence of pathogens, as well as the removal of the microbiome has been shown to increase mortality. I show that during agricultural pollination bees face high pesticide contamination and risk, much from fungicides which are known to skew the environmental microbial community. When looking across the landscape, I find that increased pesticide contamination leads to decreased bacterial diversity while a greater proportion of natural landcover significantly increases the abundance of a beneficial bee-associated bacterium. In laboratory assays, I show that disruptions to the pollen provision microbiome can have significant impacts on larval growth and mortality. Finally, I examine if bees themselves may modify the microbial community their larvae interact with and find that Andrena may use specialized abdominal glands to selectively suppress brood cell pathogens.