Characterisation of the British honey bee metagenome

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07426-0
• Publication Date: 2018-11-20T17:35:48Z
• Authors: Tim Regan; Mark W. Barnett; Dominik R. Laetsch; Stephen J. Bush; David Wragg; Giles E. Budge; Fiona Highet; Benjamin Dainat; Joachim R. de Mir...; Mick Watson; Mark Blaxter; Tom C. Freeman
• Keywords: 0303 health sciences; Science; Microbiota; Q; Genetic Variation; Sequence Analysis, DNA; Bees; Article; United Kingdom; Contig Mapping; 03 medical and health sciences; Animals; Metagenome; Metagenomics; Symbiosis

The European honey bee (Apis mellifera) plays a major role in pollination and food production. Honey health is complex product of the environment, host genetics associated microbes (commensal, opportunistic pathogenic). Improved understanding these factors will help manage modern challenges to health. Here we used DNA sequencing characterise genomes metagenomes 19 colonies from across Britain. Low heterozygosity was observed many Scottish which had high similarity native dark bee. Colonies exhibited diversity composition relative abundance individual microbiome taxa. Most non-bee sequences were derived known commensal bacteria or pathogens. However, also detected additional fungal, protozoan metazoan species. To classify cobionts lacking genomic information, developed novel network analysis approach for clustering orphan contigs. Our analyses shed light on microbial communities with bees demonstrate power high-throughput, directed metagenomics identifying biological threats agroecosystems.