Signatures of adaptive decreased virulence of deformed wing virus in an isolated population of wild honey bees (Apis mellifera)

Understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes that drive host-pathogen interactions is critical for combating epidemics and conserving species. The Varroa destructor mite and deformed wing virus (DWV) are two synergistic threats to Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) populations across the globe. Distinct honey bee populations have been found to self-sustain despite Varroa infestations, including colonies within the Arnot Forest outside Ithaca, NY, USA. We hypothesized that in these bee populations, DWV has been selected to produce an avirulent infection phenotype, allowing for the persistence of both host and disease-causing agents. To investigate this, we assessed the titer of viruses in bees from the Arnot Forest and managed apiaries, and assessed genomic variation and virulence differences between DWV isolates. Across groups, we found viral abundance was similar, but DWV genotypes were distinct. We also found that infections with isolates from the Arnot Forest resulted in h..., Spreadsheet contains data collected from naturally infected honey bee samples (Table 1-14) and experimental infections (Table 15-31). Description of each sheet can be found in Metadata sheet. The two R files contain code for analyzing the natural infections (Arnot_1.R) and experimental infections (Arnot_2.R). Basic pipeline for sequence analysis can be found in Arnot_seq_code.txt file. Consensus genomes, as well as raw sequence reads, can be found on the NCBI Genome and SRA database (PRJNA922567 and PRJNA922218, genome accessions OR497372-OR497398). , , # Signatures of adaptive decreased virulence of deformed wing virus in an isolated population of wild honey bees (Apis mellifera)

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8pk0p2ntr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8pk0p2ntr)

Data includes processed qPCR data, results from sequencing analysis of DWV genomes, and infection phenotype data from experimental infections.

## Description of the data and file structure

The data from these experiments presented in this study can be split into two parts. Part 1 (Tables 1-14) examines the prevalence and sequence identity of viruses naturally infecting bees sampled from the Arnot Forest, New York, and from managed apiaries in New York and Pennsylvania. After the collection of wild and managed bees, virus was extracted from individual samples. RNA from these viral extracts were subjected to qPCR and Illumina sequencing to characterize the viral sequence identity and load. In Part 2 (Tables 15-31), the virus inocula isolated from the naturally-infected bees f...