Artificial Diets Modulate Infection Rates by Nosema ceranae in Bumblebees.

ABSTRACT: Parasites alter the physiology and behaviour of their hosts. In domestic honey bees, the microsporidia Nosema ceranae induces energetic stress that impairs the behaviour of foragers, potentially leading to colony collapse. Whether this parasite similarly affects wild pollinators is little understood because of the low success rates of experimental infection protocols. Here, we present a new approach for infecting bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) with controlled amounts of N. ceranae by briefly exposing individual bumblebees to parasite spores before feeding them with artificial diets. We validated our protocol by testing the effect of two spore dosages and two diets varying in their protein to carbohydrate ratio on the prevalence of the parasite (proportion of PCR-positive bumblebees), the i

SUBMITTER: Gomez-Moracho T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7827189 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature