FLICKR, BOB PETERSONSocial corbiculate bees—which include honeybees, bumblebees, and stingless bees—share a core set of gut microbes, and likely inherited this insect-bacteria relationship through 80 million years of evolution, according to a study published today (March 29) in Science Advances. The bee-microbe association seems to have formed at the same time as the development of sociality among the corbiculate bees, researchers reported. University of Texas at Austin evolutionary biologist Nancy Moran and colleagues suggest that sociality may be key to the bees’ abilities to share certain microbes across generations.
“We showed that these three groups of social bees . . . have a shared core microbiome that has diverged and diversified over time,” coauthor Waldan Kwong, who is now a postdoc at the University of British Columbia, told The Scientist. “Overall, it seems that the social nature of this group of organisms is facilitating maintenance and long-term evolution of the gut bacteria,” he added. “We don’t see the same types of patterns in solitary bees.”
The researchers “demonstrate that the acquisition of host-specific gut bacteria coincided with major transitions in bee evolution including to sociality,” Corrie Moreau, an evolutionary biologist and associate curator/professor at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email. “This is a ...
