Bacterial communities associated with honeybee food stores are correlated with land use

Microbial communities, associated with almost all metazoans, can be inherited from the environment. Although the honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) gut microbiome is well documented, studies of the gut focus on just a small component of the bee microbiome. Other key areas such as the comb, propolis, honey, and stored pollen (bee bread) are poorly understood. Furthermore, little is known about the relationship between the pollinator microbiome and its environment. Here we present a study of the bee bread microbiome and its relationship with land use. We estimated bacterial community composition using both Illumina MiSeq DNA sequencing and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). Illumina was used to gain a deeper understanding of precise species diversity across samples. DGGE was used on a larger number of samples where the costs of MiSeq had become prohibitive and therefore allowed us to study a greater number of bee breads across broader geographical axes. The former demonstrates bee ...几乎所有后生动物（metazoans）的共生微生物群落均可从环境中获取。尽管西方蜜蜂（Apis mellifera L.）的肠道微生物组已得到广泛研究，但现有肠道相关研究仅覆盖了蜜蜂微生物组的极小一部分。蜂巢、蜂胶、蜂蜜以及贮藏花粉（蜂粮，bee bread）等其他关键生境的相关研究则相对匮乏。此外，学界对于传粉者微生物组与其生存环境之间的关联机制仍知之甚少。本研究聚焦于蜂粮微生物组及其与土地利用类型之间的关联。我们采用Illumina MiSeq高通量DNA测序技术与变性梯度凝胶电泳（DGGE）两种方法对细菌群落组成进行解析。借助Illumina MiSeq测序技术，我们能够更深入地解析各样品间的精确物种多样性；而当MiSeq测序成本过高时，我们可采用DGGE技术对更多样本进行分析，这使得我们能够在更广阔的地理范围内对更多蜂粮样本开展研究。前一种方法显示，蜂……