Leveraging Transcriptional Signatures of Diverse Stressors for Bumble Bee Conservation.

ABSTRACT: Organisms in nature are subjected to a variety of stressors, often simultaneously. Foremost among stressors of key pollinators are pathogens, poor nutrition and climate change. Landscape transcriptomics can be used to decipher the relative role of stressors, provided there are unique signatures of stress that can be reliably detected in field specimens. In this study, we identify biomarkers of bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) responses to key stressors by first subjecting bees to various short-term stressors (cold, heat, nutrition and pathogen challenge) in a laboratory setting and assessing their transcriptome responses. Using random forest classification on this whole transcriptome data, we were able to discriminate each stressor. Our best model (tissue-specific model trained on a subset of

SUBMITTER: Quinlan GM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11754722 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature