"Pollen diets influence gut microbiota composition and colony development in native South American bumblebees".
Castelli L, Davoine JI, Antúnez K, Ramos Y, Invernizzi C
Pollinators
Every wildflower you leave standing at the edge of your garden is a vote for the gut health of native bees — and farms ringed by monocultures are quietly starving the microbial communities bees depend on to fight disease.
Scientists studied two types of wild South American bumblebees to see whether eating pollen from just one kind of flower versus many kinds makes a difference. They found it does — the mix of helpful bacteria living inside the bees changed depending on their pollen diet, and in one bee species, a single-flower pollen diet from eucalyptus actually made worker bees bigger. This suggests that when farms replace diverse wildflower landscapes with a single crop, bees lose more than just food variety — they may also lose the gut microbes that keep them healthy.
Key Findings
Eucalyptus monofloral pollen increased worker body mass in Bombus pauloensis compared to a mixed polyfloral diet, with a slight reduction in development time.
Monofloral pollen increased bacterial gut diversity in both species, but the enriched bacteria differed by species and caste: Snodgrassella (a key bee health microbe) dominated in one species, while mostly environmental bacteria increased in the other.
Diet-driven gut microbiota shifts were caste-specific, occurring in queens of one species and workers of the other, highlighting that nutritional effects on bee health are not uniform across bee roles.
chevron_right Technical Summary
What bees eat shapes both their gut health and colony growth. Researchers found that feeding South American bumblebees pollen from a single plant species versus a diverse mix changed the community of bacteria living in their guts — and in one species, single-source eucalyptus pollen actually boosted worker bee size.
Abstract Preview
Bumblebees are excellent pollinators sustaining ecosystems, however, their populations are declining due to land-use changes, lack of food resources, and pathogen-induced diseases. The gut microbio...
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Eucalyptus is a genus of more than 700 species of flowering plants in the family Myrtaceae. Most species of Eucalyptus are trees, often mallees, and a few are shrubs. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including Corymbia and Angophora, they are commonly known as eucalypts o...