Microbial Ecology of European Foul Brood Disease in the Honey Bee (Apis mellifera): Towards a Microbiome Understanding of Disease Susceptibility.

ABSTRACT: European honey bees (Apis mellifera Linnaeus) are beneficial insects that provide essential pollination services for agriculture and ecosystems worldwide. Modern commercial beekeeping is plagued by a variety of pathogenic and environmental stressors often confounding attempts to understand colony loss. European foulbrood (EFB) is considered a larval-specific disease whose causative agent, Melissococcus plutonius, has received limited attention due to methodological challenges in the field and laboratory. Here, we improve the experimental and informational context of larval disease with the end goal of developing an EFB management strategy. We sequenced the bacterial microbiota associated with larval disease transmission, isolated a variety of M.plutonius strains

SUBMITTER: Floyd AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7565670 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature