Dataset Information

Glyphosate and a glyphosate-based herbicide affect bumblebee gut microbiota.

ABSTRACT: Pollinator decline is one of the gravest challenges facing the world today, and the overuse of pesticides may be among its causes. Here, we studied whether glyphosate, the world's most widely used pesticide, affects the bumblebee gut microbiota. We exposed the bumblebee diet to glyphosate and a glyphosate-based herbicide and quantified the microbiota community shifts using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Furthermore, we estimated the potential sensitivity of bee gut microbes to glyphosate based on previously reported presence of target enzyme. Glyphosate increased, whereas the glyphosate-based herbicide decreased gut microbiota diversity, indicating that negative effects are attributable to co-formulants. Both glyphosate and the glyphosate-based herbicide treatments significantly decreased the relative abundance of potentially glyphosate-sensitive bacterial species Snodgrasella alvi. However, the relative abundance of potentially glyphosate-sensitive Candidatus Schmidhempelia genera increased in bumblebees treated with glyphosate. Overall, 50% of the bacterial genera detected in the bee gut microbiota were classified as potentially resistant to glyphosate, while 36% were classified as sensitive. Healthy core microbiota have been shown to protect bees from parasite infections, change metabolism, and decrease mortality. Thus, the heavy use of glyphosate-based herbicides may have implications on bees and ecosystems.

SUBMITTER: Helander M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10306328 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Glyphosate and a glyphosate-based herbicide affect bumblebee gut microbiota.

Helander Marjo M Jeevannavar Aditya A Kaakinen Kimmo K Mathew Suni A SA Saikkonen Kari K Fuchs Benjamin B Puigbò Pere P Loukola Olli J OJ Tamminen Manu M

FEMS microbiology ecology 20230601 7

Pollinator decline is one of the gravest challenges facing the world today, and the overuse of pesticides may be among its causes. Here, we studied whether glyphosate, the world's most widely used pesticide, affects the bumblebee gut microbiota. We exposed the bumblebee diet to glyphosate and a glyphosate-based herbicide and quantified the microbiota community shifts using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Furthermore, we estimated the potential sensitivity of bee gut microbes to glyphosate based on pre ...[more]

PMID: 37316439

Similar Datasets

Project description:Honey bees are important agricultural pollinators that rely on a specific gut microbiota for the regulation of their immune system and defense against pathogens. Environmental stressors that affect the bee gut microbial community, such as antibiotics and glyphosate, can indirectly compromise bee health. Most of the experiments demonstrating these effects have been done under laboratory conditions with pure chemicals. Here, we investigated the oral and topical effects of various concentrations of glyphosate in a herbicide formulation on the honey bee gut microbiota and health under laboratory and field conditions. Under all of these conditions, the formulation, dissolved in sucrose syrup or water, affected the abundance of beneficial bacteria in the bee gut in a dose-dependent way. Mark-recapture experiments also demonstrated that bees exposed to the formulation were more likely to disappear from the colony, once reintroduced after exposure. Although no visible effects were observed for hives exposed to the formulation in field experiments, challenge trials with the pathogen Serratia marcescens, performed under laboratory conditions, revealed that bees from hives exposed to the formulation exhibited increased mortality compared with bees from control hives. In the field experiments, glyphosate was detected in honey collected from exposed hives, showing that worker bees transfer xenobiotics to the hive, thereby extending exposure and increasing the chances of exposure to recently emerged bees. These findings show that different routes of exposure to glyphosate-based herbicide can affect honey bees and their gut microbiota.IMPORTANCE The honey bee gut microbial community plays a vital role in immune response and defense against opportunistic pathogens. Environmental stressors, such as the herbicide glyphosate, may affect the gut microbiota, with negative consequences for bee health. Glyphosate is usually sprayed in the field mixed with adjuvants, which enhance herbicidal activity. These adjuvants may also enhance undesired effects in nontargeted organisms. This seems to be the case for glyphosate-based herbicide on honey bees. As we show in this study, oral exposure to either pure glyphosate or glyphosate in a commercial herbicide formulation perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees, and topical exposure to the formulation also has a direct effect on honey bee health, increasing mortality in a dose-dependent way and leaving surviving bees with a perturbed microbiota. Understanding the effects of herbicide formulations on honey bees may help to protect these important agricultural pollinators.

Project description:Glyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicides globally. It acts by inhibiting an enzyme in an aromatic amino synthesis pathway specific to plants and microbes, leading to view that glyphosate poses no risk to other organisms. However, there is growing concern that glyphosate is associated with detrimental health effects in humans, and an ever-increasing body of evidence suggests that glyphosate affects other animals including pollinating insects such as bees. Although pesticides have long been considered a contributing factor in the decline of wild bee populations most research on bees has focussed on demonstrating and understanding the effects (particularly sublethal ones) of insecticides. To assess whether glyphosate poses a potential risk to bees we characterised the changes in survival, behaviour, digestive tract proteome and microbiome in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris after chronic exposure to field relevant doses of glyphosate alone and as part of the commercially available product RoundUp Optima+®. Regardless of source, changes in response to herbicide exposure in important cellular and physiological processes in the digestive tract of B. terrestris were observed, with the abundances of proteins associated with oxidative stress regulation, metabolism, cellular adhesion, the extracellular matrix, and various signalling pathways being altered. Interestingly, endocytosis, oxidative phosphorylation, the TCA cycle, and carbohydrate, lipid, and amino acid metabolism were differentially altered depending on whether the exposure source was glyphosate AI or RoundUp Optima+®. In addition, RoundUp Optima+®, but not the active ingredient glyphosate, impacted fungal diversity in the digestive tract microbiota. Our research provides new insights into the potential mode of action and consequences of glyphosate exposure at the molecular and cellular levels in bumblebees and highlights issues with current regulatory measures involving commercial formulations of pesticides where the impact of the co-formulants on non-target organisms are generally overlooked.

Dataset Information

Glyphosate and a glyphosate-based herbicide affect bumblebee gut microbiota.

Publications

Glyphosate and a glyphosate-based herbicide affect bumblebee gut microbiota.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets