Antagonistic interactions between honey bee bacterial symbionts and implications for disease

BACKGROUND: Honey bees, Apis mellifera, face many parasites and pathogens and consequently rely on a diverse set of individual and group-level defenses to prevent disease. One route by which honey bees and other insects might combat disease is through the shielding effects of their microbial symbionts. Bees carry a diverse assemblage of bacteria, very few of which appear to be pathogenic. Here we explore the inhibitory effects of these resident bacteria against the primary bacterial pathogen of honey bees, Paenibacillus larvae. RESULTS: Here we isolate, culture, and describe by 16S rRNA and protein-coding gene sequences 61 bacterial isolates from honey bee larvae, reflecting a total of 43 distinct bacterial taxa. We culture these bacteria alongside the primary larval pathogen of honey bees, Paenibacillus larvae, and show that many of these isolates severely inhibit the growth of this pathogen. Accordingly, symbiotic bacteria including those described here are plausible natural antagonists toward this widespread pathogen. CONCLUSION: The results suggest a tradeoff in social insect colonies between the maintenance of potentially beneficial bacterial symbionts and deterrence at the individual and colony level of pathogenic species. They also provide a novel mechanism for recently described social components behind disease resistance in insect colonies, and point toward a potential control strategy for an important bee disease

Antagonistic interactions between honey bee bacterial symbionts and implications for disease-1

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Antagonistic interactions between honey bee bacterial symbionts and implications for disease"</p><p>BMC Ecology 2006;6():4-4.</p><p>Published online 21 Mar 2006</p><p>PMCID:PMC1471774.</p><p>Copyright © 2006 Evans and Armstrong; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.</p>r bacteria known from bees, and representative members of the major bacterial clades. Tree based on an alignment of 850 nt from the 5' end of the 16S rRNA gene. Bacteria from this study shown as MB##, followed by site of collection. Isolates that showed inhibition of the honey bee pathogen shown in bold type. Names in bold represent those isolates that inhibited and isolates followed by an asterick did not inhibit consistently

Antagonistic interactions between honey bee bacterial symbionts and implications for disease-2

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Antagonistic interactions between honey bee bacterial symbionts and implications for disease"</p><p>BMC Ecology 2006;6():4-4.</p><p>Published online 21 Mar 2006</p><p>PMCID:PMC1471774.</p><p>Copyright © 2006 Evans and Armstrong; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.</p>sentatives from [29]. Relationships were established using two of the six primers generally used to distinguish the three type bacteria within this group (GlyP, and PyC; [29]. Alignments generated from a 520 bp alignment of the GLP locus and a 520 bp alignment of the PYC locus. Isolates from honey bees shown in bold

Antagonistic interactions between honey bee bacterial symbionts and implications for disease-0

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Antagonistic interactions between honey bee bacterial symbionts and implications for disease"</p><p>BMC Ecology 2006;6():4-4.</p><p>Published online 21 Mar 2006</p><p>PMCID:PMC1471774.</p><p>Copyright © 2006 Evans and Armstrong; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.</p>in colonies within the Meadow apiary. Size bar represents 0.5 km