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Cellular and Organismic Networks

(More than) Hitchhikers through the network: the shared microbiome of bees and flowers

Posted on April 28, 2021June 28, 2022

Growing evidence reveals strong overlap between microbiomes of flowers and bees, suggesting that flowers are hubs of microbial transmission. Whether floral transmission is the main driver of bee microbiome assembly, and whether functional importance of florally sourced microbes shapes bee foraging decisions are intriguing questions that remain unanswered. We suggest that interaction network properties, such as nestedness, connectedness, and modularity, as well as specialization patterns can predict potential transmission routes of microbes between hosts. Yet microbial filtering by plant and bee hosts determines realized microbial niches. Functionally, shared floral microbes can provide benefits for bees by enhancing nutritional quality, detoxification, and disintegration of pollen. Flower microbes can also alter the attractiveness of floral resources. Together, these mechanisms may affect the structure of the flower-bee interaction network.

Keller, A., Q. S. McFrederick, P. Dharampal, S. Steffan, B. N. Danforth, and S. D. Leonhardt (2021) ”(More than) Hitchhikers through the network: The shared micro- biome of bees and flowers”. Current Opinion in Insect Science vol. 44: Special issue ”The floral microbiome and consequences on pollination, plant reproduction and insect behavior” pp. 8–15
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2020.09.007

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CiyaTheFox
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alinecmar Aline C. Martins @alinecmar ·
2 Sep

Happy to share our paper on stingless bees foraging behavior on the Cerrado biodiversity hotspot!
Read and spread! 🐝🌼
With Carol Proença Fernanda Carvalho @TNCVasconcelos @ajcaguiar @CiyaTheFox
And other amazing students and colleagues

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biorxivpreprint bioRxiv @biorxivpreprint ·
23 Jun

Opportunistic bacteria of grapevine crown galls are equipped with the genomic repertoire for opine utilization https://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.06.20.545721v1 #bioRxiv

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ciyathefox Alexander Keller @ciyathefox ·
15 Jun

Semi-automated curation and manual addition of sequences to build reliable and extensive reference databases for ITS2 vascular plant DNA (meta-)barcoding

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alinecmar Aline C. Martins @alinecmar ·
8 Jun

New preprint

Contrasting patterns of foraging behavior in Neotropical stingless bees using pollen and honey metabarcoding

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geobiodiversity Senckenberg Research @geobiodiversity ·
30 May

#Invasive alien species not only colonize foreign regions, but they can also carry #invasive #microbiomes on their skin and in their gut. This may pose an undiscovered threat to native ecosystems, according to a recent study. 👉http://sgn.one/m8z
#SenckenbergScience

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