Varroa destructor feeds primarily on honey bee fat body tissue and not hemolymph.

ABSTRACT: The parasitic mite Varroa destructor is the greatest single driver of the global honey bee health decline. Better understanding of the association of this parasite and its host is critical to developing sustainable management practices. Our work shows that this parasite is not consuming hemolymph, as has been the accepted view, but damages host bees by consuming fat body, a tissue roughly analogous to the mammalian liver. Both hemolymph and fat body in honey bees were marked with fluorescent biostains. The fluorescence profile in the guts of mites allowed to feed on these bees was very different from that of the hemolymph of the host bee but consistently matched the fluorescence profile unique to the fat body. Via transmission electron microscopy, we observed externally digested fat

SUBMITTER: Ramsey SD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6358713 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature