Meeting Abstract
Recent losses of honeybee colonies have led to an increased focus on understanding the microbial associations both within honeybee colonies and the honeybees themselves. While advances in sequencing have allowed us to identify the bacterial symbionts living within honeybee guts, still little is known about how differences in foraging behavior affect which fungal and bacterial symbionts are present in a colony and at what relative abundances. For example, seasonal variation in flowering plants may affect the symbionts to which a worker is exposed. Additionally, some colonies may display foraging preferences which could result in a distinctive colony symbiont composition. This study uses non-culture based sequencing methods to identify bacterial and fungal symbionts in multiple honeybee colonies at different times of the year and at different spatial scales. Both honey and honeybee workers were sampled from the same colonies in the fall and the spring, and DNA was extracted from honey and pooled honeybee worker gut dissections. We then used DNA metabarcoding to identify fungi and bacteria found in the honey and honeybee worker gut samples. This study provides us with a clearer understanding of how seasonal variation in honeybee foraging behavior can affect the microbial associations found within a honeybee hive.
