Modelling of seasonal immune dynamics of honey bees in response to injury and injection of heat-killed Serratia marcescens
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | The honey bee, Apis mellifera, is one of the main pollinators worldwide. In a temperate climate, seasonality affects the life span, behavioural, physiological, and immunological characteristics of honey bees, impacting their response to pathogens and parasites. In this study, we used Bayesian statistics and modelling to examine the immune response dynamics of summer and winter honey bee workers after immune challenge with heat killed Serratia marcescens, an opportunistic honey bee pathogen. We investigated humoral and cellular immune reactions on a transcriptional and functional level by qPCR of selected immune genes, antimicrobial activity assay, and flow cytometric analysis of hemocytes. We observed an increase in the number of hemocytes in summer honey bees immediately after bacterial stimuli and their rapid reduction after 24 hours. This reaction was not observed in winter bees, whereas the increase in antimicrobial activity at the transcriptional and functional levels after injection was greater in winter bees than in summer bees. Our results support the hypothesis that the summer population mounts a cellular response to S. marcescens, while winter honey bees preferentially rely on humoral immune reactions. These differences point out the necessity to target distinct mechanisms to ensure better sustainability of beekeeping in a temperate climate. Moreover, we created a model based on our data using Bayesian statistics to show the dynamics of the honey bee immunity response to the pathogen that will be employed in the further research. This approach may lead to a more quality investigation of these mechanisms. This research was funded by The Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic grant QK1910286. |
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