Turnover of strain-level diversity modulates functional traits in the honeybee gut microbiome between nurses and foragers.

Background: Strain-level diversity is widespread among bacterial species and can expand the functional potential of natural microbial communities. However, to what extent communities undergo consistent shifts in strain composition in response to environmental/host changes is less well understood.

Results: Here, we used shotgun metagenomics to compare the gut microbiota of two behavioral states of the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera), namely nurse and forager bees.

Deep Divergence and Genomic Diversification of Gut Symbionts of Neotropical Stingless Bees.

Social bees harbor conserved gut microbiotas that may have been acquired in a common ancestor of social bees and subsequently codiversified with their hosts. However, most of this knowledge is based on studies on the gut microbiotas of honey bees and bumblebees. Much less is known about the gut microbiotas of the third and most diverse group of social bees, the stingless bees.