Hot and sour: parasite adaptations to honeybee body temperature and pH.

ABSTRACT: Host temperature and gut chemistry can shape resistance to parasite infection. Heat and acidity can limit trypanosomatid infection in warm-blooded hosts and could shape infection resistance in insects as well. The colony-level endothermy and acidic guts of social bees provide unique opportunities to study how temperature and acidity shape insect-parasite associations. We compared temperature and pH tolerance between three trypanosomatid parasites from social bees and a related trypanosomatid from poikilothermic mosquitoes, which have alkaline guts. Relative to the mosquito parasites, all three bee parasites had higher heat tolerance that reflected body temperatures of hosts. Heat tolerance of the honeybee parasite Crithidia mellificae was exceptional for its genus, implicating honey

SUBMITTER: Palmer-Young EC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8634619 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature