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Yeast and Bacterial Composition in Pot-Pollen Recovered from Meliponini in Colombia: Prospects for a Promising Biological Resource

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Pot-Pollen in Stingless Bee Melittology

Abstract

Animals have an intimate association with diverse communities of microorganisms, commonly referred to as the microbiome, and bees are no exception. While several studies to date have explored the symbiotic microbial community within the gut of honeybees, little is known of the microbial communities associated with hive-stored pollen and ‘beebread’ of Meliponini. This holds particular interest, as it is believed that the processes of producing honey within beehives is largely dependent on metabolic transformations performed by microbial communities. Since such knowledge pertaining to the microbial role within natural fermentation of pollen has valuable and potential biotechnological applications, the aim of this study is to explore bioactivities and inter-domain microbial communities of the so-called ripe pollen by cataloguing the yeast component using culture-dependent methods and the bacterial components using culture-independent methods. We are reviewing and reporting original results, all from specimens collected in Colombia, about the cumulative antimicrobial activities detected in A. mellifera pollen and T. angustula pot-pollen extracts; the taxonomic composition and comparisons of the microbiomes associated with hive-stored pollen from colonies of A. mellifera, T. angustula and Melipona; and the biochemical and molecular identification of yeasts isolated from beebread of A. mellifera and from pot-pollen of four genera of stingless bees (Meliponini: Scaptotrigona, Plebeia, Paratrigona and T. angustula). This work demonstrates the importance of diversity within the inter-domain microbial communities of Meliponini species and their potential as an untapped resource for biological and/or biotechnological application and biodiversity exploration.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia y Tecnología COLCIENCIAS for the financial support, Bee Research Lab (Laboratorio de abejas) Universidad Nacional LABUN for kindly providing the beebread samples from Apis mellifera, the Asociación Apícola Comunera for kindly providing samples of stingless bees and Compañía Campo Colombia SAS for kindly providing us the samples of stingless bees used in this report. We also thank the members of Research Group AYNI ‘Microbiología Veterinaria, Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Bogotá’ for the continuous support and excellent technical help. We thank Erika García at Microbiomas Foundation, Colombia, and Nadim Ajami at Baylor College of Medicine, USA, for the excellent support on material preparation and technologies used for culture-independent analyses. We would like to thank the editors, Prof. Dr. Patricia Vit and Dr. David Roubik for their helpful and constructive remarks and the outstanding editorial work, and to Dr. Melissa L. Wos-Oxley for carefully proofreading the text and for her valuable suggestions and corrections which improved the manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. Marcela Villegas-Plazas

    Present address: RG Microbial Ecology, Division of Ecogenomics & Holobionts, Microbiomas Foundation, Chia, Colombia

  2. Judith Figueroa-Ramírez

    Present address: Research Group AYNI, Bee Science & Technology, Veterinary Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnics, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, DC, Colombia

  3. Marcela Villegas-Plazas and Judith Figueroa-Ramírez authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. RG Microbial Ecology, Division of Ecogenomics & Holobionts, Microbiomas Foundation, Chia, Colombia

    Howard Junca

  2. Research Group AYNI, Bee Science & Technology, Veterinary Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnics, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, DC, Colombia

    Carla Portillo, Paola Monserrate, Víctor Tibatá & Oswaldo Andrés Sánchez

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  1. Marcela Villegas-Plazas
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Correspondence to Howard Junca .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Food Science Department, Faculty of Pharmacy and Bioanalysis, Universidad de Los Andes, Merida, Venezuela

    Patricia Vit

  2. Biology Department, School of Philosophy, Sciences and Literature, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, Brazil

    Silvia R.M. Pedro

  3. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Panama

    David W. Roubik

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Villegas-Plazas, M. et al. (2018). Yeast and Bacterial Composition in Pot-Pollen Recovered from Meliponini in Colombia: Prospects for a Promising Biological Resource. In: Vit, P., Pedro, S., Roubik, D. (eds) Pot-Pollen in Stingless Bee Melittology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61839-5_19

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