TY - JOUR
T1 - A blood test to monitor bee health across a European network of agricultural sites of different land-use by MALDI BeeTyping mass spectrometry
AU - Askri, Dalel
AU - Pottier, Mathilde
AU - Arafah, Karim
AU - Voisin, Sébastien N.
AU - Hodge, Simon
AU - Stout, Jane C.
AU - Dominik, Christophe
AU - Schweiger, Oliver
AU - Tamburini, Giovanni
AU - Pereira-Peixoto, Maria Helena
AU - Klein, Alexandra Maria
AU - López, Vicente Martínez
AU - De la Rúa, Pilar
AU - Cini, Elena
AU - Potts, Simon G.
AU - Schwarz, Janine M.
AU - Knauer, Anina C.
AU - Albrecht, Matthias
AU - Raimets, Risto
AU - Karise, Reet
AU - di Prisco, Gennaro
AU - Ivarsson, Kjell
AU - Svensson, Glenn P.
AU - Ronsevych, Oleksandr
AU - Knapp, Jessica L.
AU - Rundlöf, Maj
AU - Onorati, Piero
AU - de Miranda, Joachim R.
AU - Bocquet, Michel
AU - Bulet, Philippe
PY - 2024/6
Y1 - 2024/6
N2 - There are substantial concerns about impaired honey bee health and colony losses due to several poorly understood factors. We used MALDI profiling (MALDI BeeTyping®) analysis to investigate how some environmental and management factors under field conditions across Europe affected the honey bee haemolymph peptidome (all peptides in the circulatory fluid), as a profile of molecular markers representing the immune status of Apis mellifera. Honey bees were exposed to a range of environmental stressors in 128 agricultural sites across eight European countries in four biogeographic zones, with each country contributing eight sites each for two different cropping systems: oilseed rape (OSR) and apple (APP). The full haemolymph peptide profiles, including the presence and levels of three key immunity markers, namely the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) Apidaecin, Abaecin and Defensin-1, allowed the honey bee responses to environmental variables to be discriminated by country, crop type and site. When considering just the AMPs, it was not possible to distinguish between countries by the prevalence of each AMP in the samples. However, it was possible to discriminate between countries on the amounts of the AMPs, with the Swedish samples in particular expressing high amounts of all AMPs. A machine learning model was developed to discriminate the haemolymphs of bees from APP and OSR sites. The model was 90.6 % accurate in identifying the crop type from the samples used to build the model. Overall, MALDI BeeTyping® of bee haemolymph represents a promising and cost-effective “blood test” for simultaneously monitoring dozens of peptide markers affected by environmental stressors at the landscape scale, thus providing policymakers with new diagnostic and regulatory tools for monitoring bee health.
AB - There are substantial concerns about impaired honey bee health and colony losses due to several poorly understood factors. We used MALDI profiling (MALDI BeeTyping®) analysis to investigate how some environmental and management factors under field conditions across Europe affected the honey bee haemolymph peptidome (all peptides in the circulatory fluid), as a profile of molecular markers representing the immune status of Apis mellifera. Honey bees were exposed to a range of environmental stressors in 128 agricultural sites across eight European countries in four biogeographic zones, with each country contributing eight sites each for two different cropping systems: oilseed rape (OSR) and apple (APP). The full haemolymph peptide profiles, including the presence and levels of three key immunity markers, namely the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) Apidaecin, Abaecin and Defensin-1, allowed the honey bee responses to environmental variables to be discriminated by country, crop type and site. When considering just the AMPs, it was not possible to distinguish between countries by the prevalence of each AMP in the samples. However, it was possible to discriminate between countries on the amounts of the AMPs, with the Swedish samples in particular expressing high amounts of all AMPs. A machine learning model was developed to discriminate the haemolymphs of bees from APP and OSR sites. The model was 90.6 % accurate in identifying the crop type from the samples used to build the model. Overall, MALDI BeeTyping® of bee haemolymph represents a promising and cost-effective “blood test” for simultaneously monitoring dozens of peptide markers affected by environmental stressors at the landscape scale, thus providing policymakers with new diagnostic and regulatory tools for monitoring bee health.
KW - Apis mellifera
KW - Environment
KW - Field study
KW - Immunity
KW - MALDI profiling
U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172239
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172239
M3 - Article
C2 - 38583620
AN - SCOPUS:85191297538
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 929
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 172239
ER -