Microbial communities of wild bees and comparative phylogenetics of key bacterial taxa across the bee tree of life

Recent years have seen a rapidly growing interest in the study of microbiomes across many animals to understand their health and well-being. Within bees, much of this work has focused on managed species of agricultural importance, such as honey bees and bumble bees. However, unmanaged wild bees are also vital to both agricultural and natural systems, and studying their microbial associates is essential to better understand the impacts of microbiomes on bee health. We used metabarcoding based on 16S and ITS1 loci to identify the bacterial and fungal associates of adult bees from 16 species representing a diverse sampling of wild bees common to eastern North America. We measured alpha and beta diversity across these species which span 10 genera and five families. Additionally, we conducted a broad phylogenetic comparison of bacterial communities across bees using previously published 16S datasets, and contrasted these findings with functional and life history traits across the bee tree of..., , # Microbial communities of wild bees and comparative phylogenetics of key bacterial taxa across the bee tree of life

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gqnk98t2c](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gqnk98t2c)

Supplementary Data Files
Sless et al. 2025, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2025.1823
\"Microbial communities of wild bees and comparative phylogenetics of key bacterial taxa across the bee tree of life\"

`Sless_et_al_rspb.2025.1823_Rscript.R`: R script including phyloseq analyses of 16S and ITS1 datasets, statistical tests, and phylogenetic comparisons (R version 4.3.2)

`Genbank_accessions.xlsx`: Spreadsheet of all samples with corresponding GenBank BioSample and SRA Accessions (read files are available through BioProject PRJNA1124100)

`table_16S.qza`: QIIME2 feature table of 16S reads from all samples. Includes up to 3 replicates of 421 total samples (373 bees, 48 blank/control)

`table_ITS1.qza`: QIIME2 feature table of ITS1 reads from all samples. Includes up to...,