STILL FROM THE MOVIE MORE THAN HONEY, COURTESY OF BORIS BAERMale honeybees protect their queens from a sexually transmitted disease (STD) by fortifying their seminal fluid with antimicrobial protein and small molecules, according to a study published this week (January 20) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The defense molecules appear to specifically target the fungal pathogen Nosema apis.
N. apis infection is “not the super-killer, but beekeepers . . . increasingly report that they have trouble with that disease,” said study coauthor Boris Baer of the University of Western Australia’s Center for Integrative Bee Research. At a time when a variety of pathogens and changing climate threaten bees, Nosema may simply be the final straw for a given colony.
“What I quite like about [the paper] is that they use different methods to really point at the actual potential protein or molecule that might be at work, while also looking at the more conceptual idea,” said Oliver Otti, a reproductive ecologist at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.
Otti and his colleagues previously demonstrated that bed bug ejaculate contains antimicrobial compounds that reduce ...
