Pollinator Diversity As a Buffer for Pollinator Disease
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POLLINATOR DIVERSITY AS A BUFFER FOR POLLINATOR DISEASE Word count: 26,035 Tina Tuerlings Student number: 01306614 Promotors: Dr. Ivan Meeus, Prof. Dr. ir. Guy Smagghe Tutors: ir. Niels Piot, Matti Pisman A dissertation submitted to Ghent University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Bioscience Engineering: Cell and Gene Biotechnology Academic year: 2017 – 2018 PREFACE There are many people that played a part in making this thesis possible. First of all, and mostly, I would like to thank my tutor Niels Piot, for having a lot of patience and being a great mentor, both in the lab and with writing this thesis. From the beginning, when giving me lab training, until the end, when I was sometimes struggling with keeping an overview during writing, you were always happy to help as fast as you could. You fueled my passion for bees even more! Also a great appreciation for Ivan Meeus, who put a lot of time in guiding me through interpretation, analysis and formulation of the results, and for Matti Pisman, for helping me and giving lots of feedback. I also want to thank prof. Guy Smagghe for giving me the opportunity to do this thesis. Lastly, I would like to thank my friends and family for the eternal support, and always inform (and sometimes overwhelm) me about bee news and facts. Above all, I want to thank Jonas Vandicke for always being by my side, through all ups-and-downs of this process, and supporting me in everything. After a year of doing research on bees, I have learned an incredible amount about these little creatures. What will stay with me the most after this research is how complex the interaction of bees with the environment is, how much more we can learn about them but also how much we can learn fróm them. “Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to 7 billion people” - Achim Steiner, Executive Director UN Environment Programme (UNEP) TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. 1 Samenvatting .......................................................................................................................................... 2 Literature study ...................................................................................................................................... 3 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 2. Pollinator diversity ...................................................................................................................... 5 Importance of pollinator diversity .................................................................................................. 5 3. Pollinator pathogens ................................................................................................................... 7 3.1. Apidae pollinator pathogens ............................................................................................... 7 3.2. Pathogens in bumble bees .................................................................................................. 7 3.3. Transmission ...................................................................................................................... 12 3.4. Multi-host pathogens and multi-pathogen hosts ............................................................. 14 4. Biodiversity and disease ........................................................................................................... 17 Scope .................................................................................................................................................... 21 Material and methods .......................................................................................................................... 22 1. Sampling .................................................................................................................................... 22 Characterized locations ................................................................................................................ 22 Landscape analysis ........................................................................................................................ 23 Species determination .................................................................................................................. 23 2. DNA extraction .......................................................................................................................... 23 3. PCR ............................................................................................................................................ 24 4. qPCR .......................................................................................................................................... 25 5. Sequencing ................................................................................................................................ 26 DNA purification ........................................................................................................................... 27 6. Statistical analysis ..................................................................................................................... 27 7. Diversity indices ........................................................................................................................ 28 Results .................................................................................................................................................. 29 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 29 2. Sampling overview .................................................................................................................... 29 3. Pathogen screening .................................................................................................................. 29 3.1. Pathogen prevalence in species ........................................................................................ 29 3.2. Pathogen prevalence in apple orchards ............................................................................ 32 3.3. Focusing on pathogen screening in Bombus sp. ............................................................... 33 3.4. Genotyping ........................................................................................................................ 34 3.5. Pathogen load ................................................................................................................... 35 4. Species diversity ........................................................................................................................ 44 4.1. Four diversity indices ........................................................................................................ 44 4.2. Pathogen prevalence and diversity ................................................................................... 46 Discussion ............................................................................................................................................. 53 1. Species overview ....................................................................................................................... 53 2. Pathogen prevalence ................................................................................................................ 54 3. Semi-natural habitat and effect of diversity ............................................................................. 55 Conclusion and future perspective ...................................................................................................... 58 References ............................................................................................................................................ 59 Addendum ............................................................................................................................................ 69 1. PCR master mixes...................................................................................................................... 69 2. Sampling overview .................................................................................................................... 71 2.1. Species distribution ........................................................................................................... 71 2.2. Location distribution ......................................................................................................... 72 ABSTRACT Pathogens and their relationships with their hosts have been studied extensively, also in bees. The impact of diseases and the transmission of pathogens is a widely discussed topic, and the complex web of multi-host pathogens and multi-pathogen hosts has been acknowledged in many different disciplines. A lot of pathogens are able to infect multiple host species, but do not necessarily have the same virulence in all host species. Pathogens can have devastating effects in one species, and only subtle effects in the other. The interaction with the host partly determines pathogen transmission, the interactions with all host species together determine