Interspecific geographic distribution and variation of the pathogens Nosema bombi and Crithidia species in United States bumble bee populations

Cordes, Nils; Huang, Wei; Strange, James P.; Cameron, Sydney A.; Griswold, Terry; Lozier, Jeffrey D.; Solter, Leellen F.

doi:10.1016/j.jip.2011.11.005

Cited by 100 publications

(111 citation statements)

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“…Moreover, B. impatiens, a stable species (4) currently reared for commercial pollination in eastern Canada and north central United States, is also known to have escaped commonly from greenhouses into the wild (18,20,23). Although overall infection rates are low in B. impatiens (4,24), infections do occur (6); thus, the species could still be a carrier of N. bombi. Because disease transmission risks were likely unknown in the earliest days of commercial colony production, it is possible that by the time producers became aware of their Nosema problems (11), heavily infected workers servicing greenhouse and open-field pollination throughout North America had already transmitted the pathogen to wild bees.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Test of the invasive pathogen hypothesis of bumble bee decline in North America

Cameron

Lim

Lozier

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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115

111

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Emergent fungal diseases are critical factors in global biodiversity declines. The fungal pathogen Nosema bombi was recently found to be widespread in declining species of North American bumble bees (Bombus), with circumstantial evidence suggesting an exotic introduction from Europe. This interpretation has been hampered by a lack of knowledge of global genetic variation, geographic origin, and changing prevalence patterns of N. bombi in declining North American populations. Thus, the temporal and spatial emergence of N. bombi and its potential role in bumble bee decline remain speculative. We analyze Nosema prevalence and genetic variation in the United States and Europe from 1980, before an alleged introduction in the early 1990s, to 2011, extracting Nosema DNA from Bombus natural history collection specimens from across this time period. Nosema bombi prevalence increased significantly from low detectable frequency in the 1980s to significantly higher frequency in the mid- to late-1990s, corresponding to a period of reported massive infectious outbreak of N. bombi in commercial bumble bee rearing stocks in North America. Despite the increased frequency, we find no conclusive evidence of an exotic N. bombi origin based on genetic analysis of global Nosema populations; the widespread Nosema strain found currently in declining United States bumble bees was present in the United States before commercial colony trade. Notably, the US N. bombi is not detectably different from that found predominantly throughout Western Europe, with both regions characterized by low genetic diversity compared with high levels of diversity found in Asia, where commercial bee breeding activities are low or nonexistent.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Test of the invasive pathogen hypothesis of bumble bee decline in North America

Cameron

Lim

Lozier

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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115

111

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“…Therefore, B. pensylvanicus showed disproportionately higher N. bombi prevalence across these sites than B. auricomus. Higher prevalence of N. bombi in B. pensylvanicus than in other species in the eastern United States has been previously reported in the literature (e.g., Cameron et al, 2011;Kissinger et al, 2011;Cordes et al, 2012), but few studies have recovered N. bombi in B. auricomus. In the eastern United States, Cordes et al (2012) found N. bombi in 15.2% of B. pensylvanicus and 1.59% of B. auricomus specimens, with an overall prevalence rate of 2.1% across all species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…Higher prevalence of N. bombi in B. pensylvanicus than in other species in the eastern United States has been previously reported in the literature (e.g., Cameron et al, 2011;Kissinger et al, 2011;Cordes et al, 2012), but few studies have recovered N. bombi in B. auricomus. In the eastern United States, Cordes et al (2012) found N. bombi in 15.2% of B. pensylvanicus and 1.59% of B. auricomus specimens, with an overall prevalence rate of 2.1% across all species. Similarly, Kissinger et al (2011) found a relatively high (3.57%) prevalence of N. bombi in B. pensylvanicus in Illinois, although the prevalence of N. bombi was very low (,1%) overall.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…As described above, both pathogens show a potential for reducing queen health and colony fitness in laboratory studies. Queen health in social insects is central to population stability over time, yet most surveys of natural populations have investigated the occurrence of these pathogens in workers and males, rather than queens (e.g., Gillespie, 2010;Kissinger et al, 2011;Cordes et al, 2012). Rates of infection are substantial in the few studies that have documented infection prevalence in colony-founding queens.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Nosema bombi(Microsporidia: Nosematidae) and Trypanosomatid Prevalence in Spring Bumble Bee Queens (Hymenoptera: Apidae:Bombus) in Kansas

Tripodi¹,

Cibils–Stewart²,

Szalanski³

2014

Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society

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Several species of bumble bees are declining in the United States; these declining populations often show higher prevalence of Nosema bombi, a microsporidian pathogen. To date, surveys of bumble bee pathogens in the United States have only been conducted on workers and males, yet the health of a population is ultimately dependent on the success of colony-founding queens. We conducted a molecular-diagnostic survey of the prevalence of N. bombi and trypanosomatids, such as Crithidia bombi, in six species of spring queens (n 5 142) collected in 2011 and 2013 at three sites in central Kansas. Nosema bombi was found in 27% of Bombus pensylvanicus and 13% of B. auricomus but was not found in the other species sampled. Trypanosomatids were only found in B. pensylvanicus (9%) during the May 2013 sampling period. The high prevalence of N. bombi in B. pensylvanicus is consistent with other surveys for this pathogen in other castes, but the high prevalence of N. bombi in B. auricomus is a novel finding. Although the conservation status of B. auricomus has not been thoroughly assessed, two recently published surveys showed that B. auricomus were less common in portions of the species' range. Based on those findings and an oft-cited link between N. bombi prevalence and bumble bee species' decline (e.g., B. pensylvanicus) in other studies, our findings suggest B. auricomus populations in Kansas may warrant further scrutiny.

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“…This is a specific example of the larger 831 issue, in that we simply do not understand the relative importance of the putative drivers of 832 wild pollinator population dynamics in the field. Similarly, we have only a vague idea of the 833 distribution and abundance patterns of endemic parasites, although studies using regional 834 (Durrer and Schmid-Hempel, 1995), and continent-scale (Cordes et al, 2012) approaches are 835 starting to fill this gap. In contrast, studies of EIDs in wild bumblebees have explicitly taken 836 large-scale geographical approaches, with parasites, some associated with population 837 declines, being mapped in N. America (Cameron et al, 2011), S. America (Schmid-Hempel 838 et al, 2014) and the United Kingdom (Fürst et al, 2014;McMahon et al, 2015).…”

Section: How Do Parasites Shape Wild Insect Pollinator Populations? 8mentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting an Ecosystem Service

Gill

Baldock

Brown

et al. 2016

Advances in Ecological Research

131

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Contact CEH NORA team at noraceh@ceh.ac.ukThe NERC and CEH trademarks and logos ('the Trademarks') are registered trademarks of NERC in the UK and other countries, and may not be used without the prior written consent of the Trademark owner. considers the importance of conserving pollinator diversity to maintain a suite of functional 79 traits to provide a diverse set of pollinator services. We explore how we can better understand 80 and mitigate the factors that threaten insect pollinator richness, placing our discussion within 81 the context of populations in predominantly agricultural landscapes in addition to urban 82 environments. We highlight a selection of important evidence gaps, with a number of 83 complementary research steps that can be taken to better understand: i) the stability of 84 pollinator communities in different landscapes in order to provide diverse pollinator services; 85 ii) how we can study the drivers of population change to mitigate the effects and support 86 stable sources of pollinator services; and, iii) how we can manage habitats in complex 87 landscapes to support insect pollinators and provide sustainable pollinator services for the 88 future. We advocate a collaborative effort to gain higher quality abundance data to 89 understand the stability of pollinator populations and predict future trends. In addition, for 90 effective mitigation strategies to be adopted, researchers need to conduct rigorous field-91 testing of outcomes under different landscape settings, acknowledge the needs of end-users 92 when developing research proposals and consider effective methods of knowledge transfer to 93 ensure effective uptake of actions. 94 95 96 5 | P a g e | P a g e

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Interspecific geographic distribution and variation of the pathogens Nosema bombi and Crithidia species in United States bumble bee populations

Cited by 100 publications

References 45 publications

Test of the invasive pathogen hypothesis of bumble bee decline in North America

Test of the invasive pathogen hypothesis of bumble bee decline in North America

Nosema bombi(Microsporidia: Nosematidae) and Trypanosomatid Prevalence in Spring Bumble Bee Queens (Hymenoptera: Apidae:Bombus) in Kansas

Protecting an Ecosystem Service

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