Omnivory in Bees: Elevated Trophic Positions among All Major Bee Families
Omnivory in Bees: Elevated Trophic Positions among All Major Bee Families
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蜜蜂的杂食性：所有主要蜂科中的营养地位升高
DOI：
10.1086/704281
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发表时间：
2019
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Chikaraishi Y.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Steffan S.A.;Dharampal P.S.;Danforth B.N.;Gaines-Day H.R.;Takizawa Y.;Chikaraishi Y.
作为花粉和花蜜采集者，蜜蜂长期以来被认为是严格的草食性动物。然而，它们的花粉供给物中有丰富的微生物群落，这些微生物群落在蜜蜂幼虫消耗花粉之前和/或同时以花粉为食。在此过程中，微生物将花粉转化为植物和微生物成分的复合物。由于微生物类似于营养等级中的后生动物消费者，因此食花粉微生物在功能上是食草动物。当蜜蜂幼虫消耗富含微生物的花粉复合物时，它们会从植物和微生物来源摄取蛋白质，因此应该在营养“阶梯”上登记为杂食动物。我们通过检查多年来从北美收集的本地蜜蜂中提取的氨基酸的同位素组成来检验这一假设。我们测量了六个主要蜂科的蜜蜂营养位置。我们的研究结果表明，蜜蜂的营养特性始终显着高于严格的食草动物，这提供了杂食性在蜜蜂动物群中普遍存在的第一个证据。这种杂食性表明，花粉传播的微生物是幼蜂的重要蛋白质来源，这引发了关于花杀菌剂残留与蜜蜂发育之间联系的新问题。
As pollen and nectar foragers, bees have long been considered strictly herbivorous. Their pollen provisions, however, are host to abundant microbial communities, which feed on the pollen before and/or while it is consumed by bee larvae. In the process, microbes convert pollen into a complex of plant and microbial components. Since microbes are analogous to metazoan consumers within trophic hierarchies, the pollen-eating microbes are, functionally, herbivores. When bee larvae consume a microbe-rich pollen complex, they ingest proteins from plant and microbial sources and thus should register as omnivores on the trophic “ladder.” We tested this hypothesis by examining the isotopic compositions of amino acids extracted from native bees collected in North America over multiple years. We measured bee trophic position across the six major bee families. Our findings indicate that bee trophic identity was consistently and significantly higher than that of strict herbivores, providing the first evidence that omnivory is ubiquitous among bee fauna. Such omnivory suggests that pollen-borne microbes represent an important protein source for larval bees, which introduces new questions as to the link between floral fungicide residues and bee development.