Gut microbiota structure differs between honey bees in winter and summer

Lucie Kešnerová; Olivier Emery; Michaël Troilo; Joanito Liberti; Berra Erkosar; Philipp Engel

fferences in the 464 loads observed between foragers, nurses, and winter bees. in winter bees. These differences in community structure were found across fourteen 475 different colonies and in three different years, suggesting that the "reconfiguration" of the 476 microbiota in winter bees is a conserved feature in colonies in Western Switzerland. 477 However, regional differences in floral diversity [24] or climate may influence this pattern. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/703512 doi: bioRxiv preprint Page 23 of 44 members increase, decrease, or remain the same in terms of bacterial cell number across 489 samples. For example, in our study, the relative abundance of Snodgrassella went down in 490 winter bees as compared to foragers and nurses (Fig. 2D) . However, this effect was not due 491 to a decrease of the total number of Snodgrassella, but rather an increase of other 492 community members as identified by qPCR. In fact, the total abundance of Snodgrassella 493 remained the same in foragers, nurses, and winter bees (Fig. 2E) analyzing microbial communities, as changes in absolute abundance -but not necessarily 498 relative abundance -may change the impact of a given bacterium on its environment.