Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Keller, Alexander
• McFrederick, Quinn S
• Dharampal, Prarthana
• Steffan, Shawn
• Danforth, Bryan N
• Leonhardt, Sara D

Titel

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

Ist Teil von

• Current opinion in insect science, 2021-04, Vol.44, p.8-15

Ort / Verlag

Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •Microbial sharing is central for microbiomes in the pollination system.•Local network architecture determines potential dispersal routes.•Species filtering however limits realized transmissions.•Florally sourced microbes can provide fitness benefits for particular bee species.•Microbes alter floral resources, affecting their attractiveness for bees. 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.