Impact of Glyphosate on the Honey Bee Gut Microbiota: Effects of Intensity, Duration, and Timing of Exposure.

ABSTRACT: Exposure to anthropogenic chemicals may indirectly compromise animal health by perturbing the gut microbiota. For example, the widely used herbicide glyphosate can affect the microbiota of honey bees, reducing the abundance of beneficial bacterial species that contribute to immune regulation and pathogen resistance. Previous studies have not addressed how this impact depends on concentration, duration of exposure, or stage of microbiota establishment. Worker bees acquire their microbiota from nestmates early in adult life, when they can also be exposed to chemicals collected by foragers or added to the hives. Here, we investigated how the gut microbiota of honey bees is affected by different concentrations of glyphosate and compared the effects with those caused by tylosin, an antibiotic c

SUBMITTER: Motta EVS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7394351 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature