The Entomological Society of America (ESA) is the “largest organization in the world serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and individuals in related disciplines.” The society, which has around 7,000 members, has brought entomologists from around the world together since its foundation in 1889. ESA has not only a yearly meeting with about 3,500 attendees, but eight internationally acclaimed journals, a quarterly magazine, and many different awards. Some of the award areas are the ESA section awards. The sections are Medical, Urban, & Veterinary Entomology (MUVE), Physiology, Biochemistry, & Toxicology (PBT), Plant-Insect Ecosystems (P-IE), and Systematic, Evolution, & Biodiversity (SysEB). PhD student Elyse McCormick won 1st place in their Graduate 10-minute presentation: P-IE, Bumble Bees.
Many animals utilize parts of their diet to help them reduce parasites and pathogens; especially insects, who come into contact with a variety of antiparasitic components through their plant-based diets. Bumble bees are a great place to examine this, because they come into contact with pollen and nectar that have interesting physical and chemical properties.
In the Adler lab, they have found that when the common eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) consumes sunflower pollen, it significantly reduces infection of a common gut parasite, Crithidia bombi. The common eastern bumble bee is a model species, meaning that it's really robust and scientists can use it in the lab frequently to understand different aspects of bee biology. But model species don't always tell them the whole story, other bees may have different traits. The Adler lab also knows that consuming sunflower pollen reduces infection by C. bombi in two of its relatives in the subgenus Pyrobombus, but with mixed results outside the subgenus.
Elyse McCormick’s project looked at how consuming sunflower pollen affects Crithidia infection in two previously untested species of bumble bees in the subgenus Pyrobombus, Bombus perplexus and Bombus ternarius, compared to wild-caught B. impatiens. They hypothesized that consuming sunflower pollen would reduce Crithidia infection in these species, similar to B. impatiens, since dietary sunflower pollen reduced Crithidia infection in other members of the subgenus Pyrobombus. Infected bees were fed either monofloral sunflower pollen, or monofloral buckwheat pollen as a control for seven days, after which they counted the number of Crithidia cells in the gut. They found that sunflower pollen significantly reduced Crithidia infection in B. impatiens, and found that there were comparable significant effects in B. perplexus and B. ternarius.
Understanding how infection works in multiple bumble bee species is important because parasites are likely affecting species differently. Given that some bumble bees are declining and global change influences bee health through many interacting stressors, the better we can understand how diet and parasite infection together influence bee health, the stronger our ability to protect and maintain healthy ecosystems will be.
To learn more about the Entomological Society of America, please click here.