article · Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
Wild honeybees play vital ecological roles, yet their internal microbial communities remain largely unexamined compared to managed species. This investigation characterised the gut bacterial flora of Apis florea, a primitive wild honeybee native to the Indian subcontinent, using both culture-dependent techniques and high-throughput genetic sequencing. Cultured isolates were analysed using mass spectrometry and ribosomal RNA sequencing, while non-culturable strains were evaluated through next-generation amplicon sequencing. The gut community primarily divided into four phyla, four families, and ten major genera. Bacteria from the Enterobacteriaceae family formed the vast majority of the community at nearly eighty percent, followed by Lactobacillaceae, Oxalobacteraceae, and Nocardiaceae. Several identified bacterial strains have not previously been recorded in other honeybee species, expanding baseline knowledge of insect microbiomes.
Honeybee gut bacteria are central to insect health, biology, and environmental interactions. While reared honeybees have been studied extensively, understanding the natural gut flora of wild species such as Apis florea helps scientists benchmark normal microbial diversity and track how wild pollinators interact with their surrounding habitats.
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Honeybees are eusocial insects with close interaction with their surrounding environment. Gut microbiota in honeybees play a significant role in host health, biology, and interaction behavior with the surrounding environment. Apis florea , a wild bee, is the most primitive among all honeybees and is indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. Previous reports on reared honeybee species provide information on the gut microbiome. No such studies are reported on the gut microbiota of the wild honeybee species. This study aimed at studying the gut microbiome of the wild honeybee species, A. florea . The study reports the analysis and the identification of gut bacteria in the wild honeybee species, A. florea , employing culture-based and culture-independent methods. Cultured bacteria were identified and characterized by MALDI-TOF MS and 16S rRNA sequencing. A comprehensive analysis and identification of non-culturable bacteria were performed by 16S rRNA amplicon next-generation sequencing. This approach splits gut bacteria into four bacterial phyla, four families, and 10 genera in major. The dominant taxa identified in A. florea belonged to the family Enterobacteriaceae (79.47%), Lactobacillaceae (12.75%), Oxalobacteraceae (7.45%), and Nocardiaceae (0.13%). The prevailing bacteria belonged to Enterobacter, Lactobacillus, Escherichia-Shigella, Massilia, Klebsiella, Citrobacter, Pantoea, Serratia, Rhodococcus , and Morganella genera, belonging to phyla Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes. This study observed the occurrence of a few bacteria that are not previously reported for their occurrence in other species of the Apis genus, making this investigation highly relevant with regard to the bee microbiome.
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DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2022.837381
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