Exosymbiotic microbes within fermented pollen provisions are as important for the development of solitary bees as the pollen itself.

ABSTRACT: Developing bees derive significant benefits from the microbes present within their guts and fermenting pollen provisions. External microbial symbionts (exosymbionts) associated with larval diets may be particularly important for solitary bees that suffer reduced fitness when denied microbe-colonized pollen.To investigate whether this phenomenon is generalizable across foraging strategy, we examined the effects of exosymbiont presence/absence across two solitary bee species, a pollen specialist and generalist. Larvae from each species were reared on either microbe-rich natural or microbe-deficient sterilized pollen provisions allocated by a female forager belonging to their own species (conspecific-sourced pollen) or that of another species (heterospecific-sourced pollen). Our results revea

SUBMITTER: Dharampal PS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8986510 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature