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    Surprising science behind bumblebee superfood    
    Sunflower family's spiny pollen vastly reduces prevalence of widespread   
   parasite in bumblebees, increases production of queens    
      
     Date:   
         April 5, 2023   
     Source:   
         University of Massachusetts Amherst   
     Summary:   
         It's the spines. New research shows that the spiny pollen from   
         plants in the sunflower family (Asteraceae) both reduces infection   
         of a common bee parasite by 81 -- 94% and markedly increases   
         the production of queen bumble bees. The research provides   
         much-needed food for thought in one of the most vexing problems   
         facing biologists and ecologists: how to reverse the great die-off   
         of the world's pollinators.   
      
      
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   FULL STORY   
   ==========================================================================   
   It's the spines. This is the conclusion of two new papers, led by   
   researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, showing that   
   the spiny pollen from plants in the sunflower family (Asteraceae)   
   both reduces infection of a common bee parasite by 81 -- 94% and   
   markedly increases the production of queen bumble bees. The research,   
   appearing in Functional Ecologyand Proceedings of the Royal Society B:   
   Biological Sciences,provides much-needed food for thought in one of the   
   most vexing problems facing biologists and ecologists: how to reverse   
   the great die-off of the world's pollinators.   
      
      
   ==========================================================================   
   Insect pollinators -- those flying, buzzing flitting bugs that help   
   fertilize everything from blueberries to coffee -- contribute upwards of   
   $200 billion in annual ecosystem services, worldwide. "We depend on them   
   for diverse, healthy, nutritious diets," says Laura Figueroa, incoming   
   assistant professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and   
   the lead author of the paper on pollen spines. However, many pollinators   
   are suffering an unprecedented decline, due to the widespread use of   
   pesticides, habitat loss and other causes, and scientists around the   
   world are working diligently to figure out how to fight the apocalypse.   
      
   One of the big breakthroughs in helping pollinators, and especially bees,   
   is the discovery that certain species of flowers can help pollinators   
   resist disease infections, and that sunflowers are particularly effective   
   at combatting a widespread pathogen that lives in a bee's gut, called   
   Crithidia bombi.   
      
   But until now, no one knew why sunflowers were so effective at staving   
   off C.   
      
   bombi, or if other flowers in the sunflower family had the same pathogen-   
   fighting powers.   
      
   Physics, not chemistry "We know that the health benefits from some foods   
   come from the specific chemicals in them" says Figueroa. "But we also   
   know that some foods are healthy because of their physical structure --   
   think of foods high in fiber."  To discover how sunflowers help bumblebees   
   withstand C. bombi, Figueroa and her team devised an experiment that   
   hinged on separating out the pollen's spiny outer shell from the chemical   
   metabolites in the pollen's core. They then mixed the spiny sunflower   
   shell, with the chemistry removed, into the pollen fed to one batch   
   of bees, while another batch was fed wildflower pollen sprinkled with   
   sunflower metabolites and no sunflower shells.   
      
   "We discovered that the bees that ate the spiny sunflower pollen shells   
   had the same response as bees feeding on whole sunflower pollen, and   
   that they suffered 87% lower infections from C. bombi than bees feeding   
   on the sunflower metabolites," says Figueroa.   
      
   But that's not all. Bees fed pollen from ragweed, cocklebur, dandelion   
   and dog fennel -- all members of the sunflower family and with similarly   
   spiny pollen shells -- had low rates of C. bombi infection similar to   
   the bees who ate sunflower pollen -- which raises the possibility that   
   such disease-fighting medicinal effects may be common to plants in the   
   sunflower family.   
      
   Food fit for a queen One of the counter-intuitive aspects of the new   
   research is that sunflower pollen is not in itself all that nutritious,   
   because sunflower pollen is low in protein. And while the pollen might   
   be great at protecting bumblebees from a gut pathogen like C. bombi,   
   it would be of little use to feed bumblebees sunflowers and relatives   
   if malnutrition resulted.   
      
   "It's no good curing the common cold if you starve the patient," says Lynn   
   Adler, professor of biology at UMass Amherst and the senior author of the   
   paper looking at sunflower pollen and queen bee production. "We need to   
   look at the community level, as well as what's happening in bees' guts,   
   to know how to help them respond to stressful environments," says Adler.   
      
   One way to gauge a colony's health is by the number of queens it produces,   
   because queens are the way a bumble bee colony passes on its genes to   
   the next generation. And queens aren't born, they're grown. Colonies   
   use the food resources they've collected to turn a small number of bee   
   larvae into daughter queens. Once the cold weather arrives, all the   
   workers and the old queen will die. The only bees that survive are the   
   new daughter queens. If they survive the winter, they will produce an   
   entirely new colony in the spring. The more queens a colony produces,   
   the higher the likelihood that a colony's genes be passed down through   
   many generations of bees.   
      
   To test the impact of sunflowers on colony health, Adler and her team   
   placed commercial colonies of bumblebees on twenty different farms in   
   Western Massachusetts, which grew varying amounts of sunflowers. Over   
   the course of several weeks, the team sampled the pathogens collecting   
   in their bees' guts, weighed the colonies to determine whether or not   
   they were thriving and counted the number of daughter queens.   
      
   "What we found is that infection decreased with increasing sunflower   
   abundance, and perhaps more importantly, queen bee production increased   
   by 30% for every order of magnitude increase in the availability of   
   sunflower pollen," says Rosemary Malfi, lead author of the paper and who   
   completed the research as part of her postdoctoral work in Adler's lab.   
      
   Though there's more research to be done into exactly whysunflower   
   pollen benefits queen bees -- perhaps bumblebees have more energy   
   for reproduction if they're not fighting disease, or maybe C. bombi   
   impairs learning and foraging, so that reducing infection increases the   
   bees' ability to find food -- Adler says that "it's really exciting to   
   show that sunflower not only reduces disease, but positively affects   
   reproduction."  Next Steps Figueroa and Adler are quick to point out that   
   this research, which was supported by the US National Science Foundation   
   and Department of Agriculture, does not represent a solution to the   
   insect apocalypse. This research was conducted using just one common   
   species of bumblebees, which is not endangered.   
      
   More research needs to be done into how Asteraceae pollen affects other   
   bumblebee species that are threatened. Nor is it known exactly how the   
   spiny Asteraceae pollen protects against C. bombi. But these initial   
   results are encouraging, and indicate that the sunflower family may   
   very well play a role in maintaining pollinator health, and, ultimately,   
   the health of our own food systems.   
      
       * RELATED_TOPICS   
             o Plants_&_Animals   
                   # Agriculture_and_Food # Food_and_Agriculture # Seeds #   
                   Mating_and_Breeding   
             o Earth_&_Climate   
                   # Exotic_Species # Geochemistry # Ecology #   
                   Environmental_Issues   
       * RELATED_TERMS   
             o Bee o Asteraceae o Ragweed o Pollination_management o   
             Bee_sting o Africanized_bee o Botany o Origin_of_life   
      
   ==========================================================================   
   Story Source: Materials provided by   
   University_of_Massachusetts_Amherst. Note: Content may be edited for   
   style and length.   
      
      
   ==========================================================================   
   Journal References:   
      1. Laura L. Figueroa, Alison Fowler, Stephanie Lopez, Victoria   
      E. Amaral,   
         Hauke Koch, Philip C. Stevenson, Rebecca E. Irwin, Lynn S. Adler.   
      
         Sunflower spines and beyond: Mechanisms and breadth of pollen   
         that reduce gut pathogen infection in the common eastern bumble   
         bee. Functional Ecology, 2023; DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.14320   
      2. Rosemary L. Malfi, Quinn S. McFrederick, Giselle Lozano, Rebecca E.   
      
         Irwin, Lynn S. Adler. Sunflower plantings reduce a common gut   
         pathogen and increase queen production in common eastern bumblebee   
         colonies.   
      
         Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2023;   
         290 (1996) DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.0055   
   ==========================================================================   
      
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230405160859.htm   
      
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