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Data And R Code For "Gut Transplants From Bees Fed An Antipathogenic Pollen Diet Do Not Confer Pathogen Resistance To Recipients", Rachel T. Yost, Alison E. Fowler, Lynn S. Adler Jan 2023

Data And R Code For "Gut Transplants From Bees Fed An Antipathogenic Pollen Diet Do Not Confer Pathogen Resistance To Recipients", Rachel T. Yost, Alison E. Fowler, Lynn S. Adler

Data and Datasets

Pollinators are threatened by diverse stressors, including microbial pathogens such as Crithidia bombi. Consuming sunflower pollen dramatically reduces C. bombi infection in the bumble bee Bombus impatiens, but the mechanism behind this medicinal effect is unclear. We asked whether diet mediates resistance to C. bombi through changes in the gut microbiome. We hypothesized that sunflower pollen changes the gut microbiome, which in turn reduces Crithidia infection. To test this, we performed a gut transplant experiment. We fed donor bees either a sunflower pollen treatment or buckwheat pollen as a control treatment, and then inoculated recipient bees with homogenized guts …


Sunflower Plantings Reduce A Common Gut Pathogen And Increase Queen Production In Bumble Bee Colonies, Rosemary L. Malfi, Quinn S. Mcfrederick, Giselle Lozano, Rebecca E. Irwin, Lynn S. Adler Jan 2022

Sunflower Plantings Reduce A Common Gut Pathogen And Increase Queen Production In Bumble Bee Colonies, Rosemary L. Malfi, Quinn S. Mcfrederick, Giselle Lozano, Rebecca E. Irwin, Lynn S. Adler

Data and Datasets

We evaluated whether plantings of sunflower (Helianthus annuus), whose pollen reduces infection by some pathogens when fed to bees in captivity, lowered pathogen levels and increased reproduction in free-foraging bumble bee colonies (Bombus impatiens). We placed pairs of commercial colonies of B. impatiens at 20 mixed vegetable farms in western Massachusetts between Jul-23 and Oct-6 2019. Flowering resources typically visited by bumble bees were quantified at each farm twice to characterize abundance and diversity. We also visited each farm 3-4 times and at each visit, we (a) recorded colony weights to track growth, (b) collected ~10 …


The Intersection Of Bee And Flower Sexes: Pollen Presence Shapes Sex-Specific Bee Foraging Associations In Sunflower, Justin C. Roch, Rosemary Malfi, Jennifer I. Van Wyk, Deicy Carolina Muñoz Agudelo, Joan Milam, Lynn S. Adler Jan 2022

The Intersection Of Bee And Flower Sexes: Pollen Presence Shapes Sex-Specific Bee Foraging Associations In Sunflower, Justin C. Roch, Rosemary Malfi, Jennifer I. Van Wyk, Deicy Carolina Muñoz Agudelo, Joan Milam, Lynn S. Adler

Data and Datasets

We evaluated whether female or male bees were more abundant on sunflowers, whether female bees were more abundant on pollen-fertile or pollen-sterile sunflower cultivars, and whether the bee community differed between pollen-fertile and pollen-sterile sunflower cultivars. We further evaluated whether bee communities were shaped by local floral resources and landscape composition. We sampled bees visiting sunflowers (Helianthus spp.) from 14 farms in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts between 25 July to 27 September 2019, typically making two sampling visits to a farm. We also measured floral resource diversity and abundance at the farms, and categorized the landscape types …