Evolution of gut microbiota across honeybee species revealed by comparative metagenomics.

ABSTRACT: Studying gut microbiota evolution across animals is crucial for understanding symbiotic interactions but is hampered by the lack of high-resolution genomic data. Honeybees, with their specialized gut microbiota and well-known ecology, offer an ideal system to study this evolution. Using shotgun metagenomics on 200 worker bees from five honeybee species, we recover thousands of metagenome-assembled genomes and identify several novel bacterial species. While microbial communities were mostly host-specific, we found both specialists and generalists, even among closely related bacterial species, with notable variation between honeybee hosts. Some bacterial generalists emerged host-specific only at the strain level, suggesting recent host switches. While we found some signal of co-diversificati

SUBMITTER: Prasad A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12518797 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature