No impacts of glyphosate or Crithidia bombi, or their combination, on the bumblebee microbiome
Pesticides are recognised as a key threat to pollinators, impacting their health in many ways. One route through which pesticides can affect pollinators like bumblebees is through the gut microbiome, with knock-on effects on their immune system and parasite resistance. We tested the impacts of a hig...
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Published in | Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; pp. 8949 - 8 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing Group UK
02.06.2023
Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Pesticides are recognised as a key threat to pollinators, impacting their health in many ways. One route through which pesticides can affect pollinators like bumblebees is through the gut microbiome, with knock-on effects on their immune system and parasite resistance. We tested the impacts of a high acute oral dose of glyphosate on the gut microbiome of the buff tailed bumblebee (
Bombus terrestris
), and glyphosate’s interaction with the gut parasite (
Crithidia bombi
). We used a fully crossed design measuring bee mortality, parasite intensity and the bacterial composition in the gut microbiome estimated from the relative abundance of 16S rRNA amplicons. We found no impact of either glyphosate,
C. bombi
, or their combination on any metric, including bacterial composition. This result differs from studies on honeybees, which have consistently found an impact of glyphosate on gut bacterial composition. This is potentially explained by the use of an acute exposure, rather than a chronic exposure, and the difference in test species. Since
A. mellifera
is used as a model species to represent pollinators more broadly in risk assessment, our results highlight that caution is needed in extrapolating gut microbiome results from
A. mellifera
to other bee species. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2045-2322 2045-2322 |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-023-35304-3 |