Nutrigenomics and the resilience of bees in a changing climate

蜜蜂是我们最重要的授粉者，对生态系统稳定和全球粮食安全至关重要-每年提供价值数千亿英镑的授粉服务。英国是约245种野生蜜蜂的家园，比管理的蜜蜂和大黄蜂进行更多的授粉。不幸的是，在多种原因的压力下，野生蜜蜂的数量正在下降-其中一个关键因素是营养。蜜蜂用从野外采集的花粉喂养后代。但是，农业集约化等人类影响正在改变蜜蜂的营养景观[3，4]，并从根本上影响基因表达，生长和繁殖。我们对蜜蜂营养的了解大多来自对蜜蜂或大黄蜂等社会蜜蜂的研究[5，6]，其中营养影响种姓决定，发育，病原体抗性等。然而，其他蜜蜂的营养生态学，特别是独居蜜蜂，在很大程度上还没有被研究过。人类活动也在改变气候，提高平均气温。温度影响动物的代谢率、生理、消化和营养同化，以及基因表达。吉尔伯特博士最近的工作[7]已经确定了需要储存足够的碳水化合物和脂肪来度过冬天，这对独居蜜蜂的营养生态可能至关重要。但我们对这是如何调节的，气候变化将如何影响蜜蜂，以及蜜蜂将如何应对不断变化的营养景观知之甚少。我们现在不仅能够了解不同的营养景观和气候是否会影响蜜蜂，而且能够了解它们是如何影响蜜蜂的。这个令人兴奋的项目将野外生态学与尖端分子方法相结合，以解决蜜蜂如何受到人类改变的营养景观影响的关键知识缺口，解决纯生态科学，保护生物学，农业和作物科学相关的问题。在船体，吉尔伯特博士的实验室开创了经济和生态上重要的独居蜜蜂的饲养协议，双角壁蜂为蜜蜂营养生态学提供了前所未有的窗口。在利兹，邓肯博士的实验室使用尖端的分子工具来了解蜜蜂是如何受到他们的环境的影响，进行开创性的工作，营养如何影响基因表达在发展中的蜜蜂，加上最近的工作，对环境和分子控制繁殖在O。双角的学生将利用这个机会综合这两个小组的研究，建立合作联系。在受控的实验室环境中使用操作，学生将建立饮食常量营养素如何影响孤独的蜜蜂幼虫的适应性，以应对饲养温度的变化。他们将使用高通量测序技术来检查接受不同饮食和温度处理的幼虫的全基因组表达谱，以了解蜜蜂对景观和气候变化反应的分子和生理机制。已知营养提示会改变基因表达[8]，但迄今为止的研究主要集中在少数基因上，并且仅在蜜蜂中。学生将比较接受不同处理的幼虫在（1）幼虫对消耗哪些营养素的选择，（2）健康的相关性，如体型和越冬生存，和（3）生长与滞育相关基因的表达。结果：研究结果将揭示蜜蜂的最佳营养，为气候变化时保护和促进这些重要的授粉者提供积极措施，如野花带。结果将显示不同的营养景观对蜜蜂的生理影响，从而了解独居蜜蜂在气候变化中对景观变化的适应能力。研究结果将与现有的社会蜜蜂基因表达、生理学和营养基因组学知识进行比较和对比，为蜜蜂营养生态学提供无与伦比的见解。

Bees, our foremost pollinators, are vital for ecosystem stability and global food security - providing pollination services worth hundreds of billions of pounds annually. The UK is home to ~245 species of wild bees performing more pollination than managed honeybees and bumblebees. Unfortunately, wild bee populations are declining, under pressure from multiple causes - one key factor being nutrition. Bees feed offspring with pollen gathered from the landscape. But human influences such as agricultural intensification are altering nutritional landscapes for bees [3,4], and fundamentally affecting gene expression, growth and reproduction. Most of what we know about bee nutrition comes from studies in social bees like honeybees or bumblebees [5,6], where nutrition influences caste determination, development, pathogen resistance and others. However, the nutritional ecology of other bees, particularly solitary bees, is largely unstudied.Human activity is also changing climates and raising average temperatures. Temperature affects animals' metabolic rate, physiology, digestion, and nutrient assimilation, as well as gene expression. Dr Gilbert's recent work [7] has identified the need to store enough carbohydrate and fat to survive the winter as potentially critical for solitary bees' nutritional ecology. But we know little about how this is regulated, how climate change will affect bees, and how bees will deal with changing nutritional landscapes. We are now in a position to understand not just whether but how different nutritional landscapes and climates affect bees. This exciting project combines field ecology with cutting edge molecular approaches to address a crucial knowledge gap about how bees are being affected by human-altered nutritional landscapes addressing issues relevant for pure ecological science, conservation biology, agriculture and crop science.At Hull, Dr Gilbert's lab has pioneered rearing protocols for the economically and ecologically important solitary bee, Osmia bicornis providing an unprecedented window onto bee nutritional ecology. At Leeds, Dr Duncan's lab uses cutting-edge molecular tools to understand how bees are influenced by their environment conducting groundbreaking work on how nutrition affects gene expression in developing bees plus recent work on the environmental and molecular control of reproduction in O. bicornis. The student will capitalise on this opportunity to synthesize the research of these two groups creating collaborative links.Using manipulations within controlled laboratory environments, the student will establish how dietary macronutrients affect the fitness of solitary bee larvae in response to changes in rearing temperature. They will use high-throughput sequencing technology to examine genome-wide expression profiles of larvae receiving different diet and temperature treatments, to understand the molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying bees' responses to landscape and climate change. Nutritional cues are known to alter gene expression [8], but to date studies have focussed largely on a few genes, and only in honeybees. The student will compare larvae receiving different treatments in (1) choices larvae make about which nutrients to consume, (2) correlates of fitness such as body size and overwinter survival, and (3) expression of growth- versus diapause-related genes.Outcomes:The findings will shed light on the optimal nutrition for bees informing active measures such as wildflower strips to conserve and promote these vital pollinators as the climate changes. Results will show the physiological effects of different nutritional landscapes upon bees allowing an understanding of the resilience of solitary bees to landscape change in a changing climate. The results will provide comparisons and contrasts with existing knowledge of social bee gene expression, physiology and nutrigenomics, providing unparalleled insights into bee nutritional ecology.