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Contributed Poster

Session: Pollination

PS 17-241 - Mass-Flowering Monoculture Alters Wild Bee Gut Microbial Composition

Monday, August 7, 2023
5:00 PM – 6:30 PM PDT
Location: ESA Exhibit Hall
Abstract: The stability of global agriculture relies heavily on the presence of wild and managed bee populations to provide pollination services. Crops are increasingly grown in mass-flowering monocultures and understanding the effect of such practices on pollinator health is necessary to maintain pollinator populations. Previous research (Cohen et al., 2021) revealed that these resource pulses significantly correlate to increased wild bee abundance and, in sites with low presence of non-crop flowers, wild bee abundance was associated with higher parasite presence. However, it is still relatively unknown how these resource pulses may impact the gut microbial composition of wild and managed bee populations over the course of a flowering season. To study this, we sequenced 16s amplicon extracted from the guts of 1644 wild and managed bees from 16 genera within a monoculture landscape across 200 km2 of the California Central Valley. We hypothesized that since resource pulses significantly influence wild bee abundance, the gut microbial composition of wild bees will vary over time due to an increased number of direct or indirect plant-bee interactions. We found that microbial alpha diversity of the bee gut differed across genera. The genus Apis, comprised of managed honeybees, exhibited no significant change in microbial diversity throughout the season in monoculture fields with and without non-crop flowers. However, we found that the genera Lasioglossum and Halictus varied significantly in gut microbial diversity before, during, and after the resource pulse, regardless of the abundance of non-crop flowers. Overall, these findings contribute to our understanding of how microbial transmission among wild and managed bees occurs, revealing further the implications of agricultural practices on bee gut microbial assemblages.