TY - JOUR
T1 - Iridovirus and microsporidian linked to honey bee colony decline
AU - Bromenshenk, Jerry J.
AU - Henderson, Colin B.
AU - Wick, Charles H.
AU - Stanford, Michael F.
AU - Zulich, Alan W.
AU - Jabbour, Rabih E.
AU - Deshpande, Samir V.
AU - McCubbin, Patrick E.
AU - Seccomb, Robert A.
AU - Welch, Phillip M.
AU - Williams, Trevor
AU - Firth, David R.
AU - Skowronski, Evan
AU - Lehmann, Margaret M.
AU - Bilimoria, Shan L.
AU - Gress, Joanna
AU - Wanner, Kevin W.
AU - Cramer, Robert A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Jerry J. Bromenshenk is CEO and a co-owner of Bee Alert Technology, Inc., Missoula, MT; a Montana Board of Regents' Approved Technology transfer company affiliated with The University of Montana. Colin Henderson is a co-owner and Research Vice President of Bee Alert, and Robert Seccomb is a co-owner and Chief Financial Officer of this company. Rabbih E. Jabbour is employed by Science Applications International Corporation, Abingdon, MD; Samir V. Deshpande is employed by Science Technology Corporation, Edgewood, MD; and Patrick E. McCubbin is employed by OptiMetrics, Inc., Abingdon, MD. These latter three companies provide contract research personnel to the US Army. For all four companies, financial support was in the form of salaries for contracted research. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in our guide for authors.
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Background: In 2010 Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), again devastated honey bee colonies in the USA, indicating that the problem is neither diminishing nor has it been resolved. Many CCD investigations, using sensitive genome-based methods, have found small RNA bee viruses and the microsporidia, Nosema apis and N. ceranae in healthy and collapsing colonies alike with no single pathogen firmly linked to honey bee losses. Methodology/Principal Findings: We used Mass spectrometry-based proteomics (MSP) to identify and quantify thousands of proteins from healthy and collapsing bee colonies. MSP revealed two unreported RNA viruses in North American honey bees, Varroa destructor-1 virus and Kakugo virus, and identified an invertebrate iridescent virus (IIV) (Iridoviridae) associated with CCD colonies. Prevalence of IIV significantly discriminated among strong, failing, and collapsed colonies. In addition, bees in failing colonies contained not only IIV, but also Nosema. Co-occurrence of these microbes consistently marked CCD in (1) bees from commercial apiaries sampled across the U.S. in 2006-2007, (2) bees sequentially sampled as the disorder progressed in an observation hive colony in 2008, and (3) bees from a recurrence of CCD in Florida in 2009. The pathogen pairing was not observed in samples from colonies with no history of CCD, namely bees from Australia and a large, nonmigratory beekeeping business in Montana. Laboratory cage trials with a strain of IIV type 6 and Nosema ceranae confirmed that co-infection with these two pathogens was more lethal to bees than either pathogen alone. Conclusions/Significance: These findings implicate co-infection by IIV and Nosema with honey bee colony decline, giving credence to older research pointing to IIV, interacting with Nosema and mites, as probable cause of bee losses in the USA, Europe, and Asia. We next need to characterize the IIV and Nosema that we detected and develop management practices to reduce honey bee losses.
AB - Background: In 2010 Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), again devastated honey bee colonies in the USA, indicating that the problem is neither diminishing nor has it been resolved. Many CCD investigations, using sensitive genome-based methods, have found small RNA bee viruses and the microsporidia, Nosema apis and N. ceranae in healthy and collapsing colonies alike with no single pathogen firmly linked to honey bee losses. Methodology/Principal Findings: We used Mass spectrometry-based proteomics (MSP) to identify and quantify thousands of proteins from healthy and collapsing bee colonies. MSP revealed two unreported RNA viruses in North American honey bees, Varroa destructor-1 virus and Kakugo virus, and identified an invertebrate iridescent virus (IIV) (Iridoviridae) associated with CCD colonies. Prevalence of IIV significantly discriminated among strong, failing, and collapsed colonies. In addition, bees in failing colonies contained not only IIV, but also Nosema. Co-occurrence of these microbes consistently marked CCD in (1) bees from commercial apiaries sampled across the U.S. in 2006-2007, (2) bees sequentially sampled as the disorder progressed in an observation hive colony in 2008, and (3) bees from a recurrence of CCD in Florida in 2009. The pathogen pairing was not observed in samples from colonies with no history of CCD, namely bees from Australia and a large, nonmigratory beekeeping business in Montana. Laboratory cage trials with a strain of IIV type 6 and Nosema ceranae confirmed that co-infection with these two pathogens was more lethal to bees than either pathogen alone. Conclusions/Significance: These findings implicate co-infection by IIV and Nosema with honey bee colony decline, giving credence to older research pointing to IIV, interacting with Nosema and mites, as probable cause of bee losses in the USA, Europe, and Asia. We next need to characterize the IIV and Nosema that we detected and develop management practices to reduce honey bee losses.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=78049248014&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0013181
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0013181
M3 - Article
C2 - 20949138
AN - SCOPUS:78049248014
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 5
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 10
M1 - e13181
ER -