Heather pollen is not necessarily a healthy diet for bumble bees use asterix (*) to get italics

Clément Tourbez, Irène Semay, Apolline Michel, Denis Michez, Pascal Gerbaux, Antoine Gekière, Maryse VanderplanckPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2023

<p>There is evidence that specialised metabolites of flowering plants occur in both vegetative parts and floral resources (i.e., pollen and nectar), exposing pollinators to their biological activities. While such metabolites may be toxic to bees, it may also help them to deal with environmental stressors. One example is heather nectar which has been shown to limit bumble bee infection by a trypanosomatid parasite, Crithidia sp., because of callunene activity. Besides in nectar, heather harbours high content of specialised metabolites in pollen such as flavonoids but they have been poorly investigated. In this study, we aimed to assess the impact of Crithidia sp., heather pollen and its flavonoids on bumble bees using non-parasitised and parasitised microcolonies fed either control pollen diet (i.e., willow pollen), heather pollen diet, or flavonoid-supplemented pollen diet. We found that heather pollen and its flavonoids significantly affected microcolonies by decreasing pollen collection as well as offspring production, and by increasing male fat body content while parasite exposure had no significant effect except for an increase in male fat body. We did not highlight any medicinal effect of heather pollen or its flavonoids on parasitised bumble bees. Our results provide insight into the impact of pollen specialised metabolites in heather-bumble bee-parasite interactions. They underline the contrasting roles for bumble bees of the two floral resources and highlight the importance of considering both nectar and pollen when addressing medicinal effects of a plant towards pollinators.</p>

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7804841You should fill this box only if you chose 'All or part of the results presented in this preprint are based on data'. URL must start with http:// or https://

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7804841You should fill this box only if you chose 'Scripts were used to obtain or analyze the results'. URL must start with http:// or https://

Plant-pollinator interaction, Pollen specialised metabolite, Microcolony performance, Bumble bee health, Parasite

NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).

Botany, Chemical ecology, Host-parasite interactions, Pollination, Zoology

Hauke Koch (h.koch@kew.org); Mark J.F. Brown (Mark.Brown@rhul.ac.uk); Philip C. Stevenson (P.C.Stevenson@greenwich.ac.uk) No need for them to be recommenders of PCIEcology. Please do not suggest reviewers for whom there might be a conflict of interest. Reviewers are not allowed to review preprints written by close colleagues (with whom they have published in the last four years, with whom they have received joint funding in the last four years, or with whom they are currently writing a manuscript, or submitting a grant proposal), or by family members, friends, or anyone for whom bias might affect the nature of the review - see the code of conduct

2023-04-10 21:22:34

Ignasi Bartomeus