Bacterial-archaeal co-occurrence in honey bee gut microbiomes across host species and management regimes.

ABSTRACT: Honeybees are key pollinators, and their overwintering period represents a critical bottleneck for colony survival. We investigated how host species and husbandry practices influence the composition of gut bacterial and archaeal communities of overwintering honeybees, as well as the potential functional consequences for energy metabolism and resilience. Using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing combined with marker-gene functional inference, we observed that wild Apis cerana (wAc) harbors the most diverse gut microbiome across both bacterial and archaeal domains. Notably, wAc exhibited a significant enrichment of methanogenic archaea (e.g., Methanocorpusculaceae and Methanosarcinaceae), a pattern potentially consistent with bacterial-archaeal metabolic coupling that may improve fermentation therm

SUBMITTER: Ying JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12822932 | biostudies-literature | 2026

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature