"Using historical collections to understand the evolutionary response of bees to an emergent parasite" -- Dr. Alexander Mikheyev

Internal Seminar: Alexander Mikheyev, Associate Professor, Ecology and Evolution Unit (Mikheyev Unit)

Title: Using historical collections to understand the evolutionary response
of bees to an emergent parasite

Abstract: When populations encounter sudden biotic pressures, such as those from novel diseases and pathogens, they must respond rapidly to these changes or face potential extinction. How this response process takes place remains poorly understood, particularly in natural environments. Over the past several years, I have taken advantage of unique decades-long data sets of wild (feral) honey bees from two geographic regions in the USA. Across the USA honey bee populations have been hard hit by a novel parasite, the ectoparasitic Varroa mite, providing an opportunity to see how they deal with this selective challenge. In the first region, in northern New York State, we compared population genomic data from museum samples, collected before Varroa arrived, to those living today (32 genomes each). In the second region, we took advantage of historical material in two southern populations separated by 1400 km, which were sampled every year before and after Varroa‘s arrival. From these two populations we sequenced 489 genomes, which enabled us to estimate the strength of selection acting on every polymorphic gene. All three populations showed evidence of a polygenic selective response, which likely differed between the southern and northern populations, but was correlated between the southern populations (r = 0.7). These results suggest that wild honey bee colonies are resilient to disease and capable of rapid and reproducible selective responses when faced with novel parasites and pathogens. 

Refreshments will be served afterwards. We hope to see you there!

Sincerely,

Internal Seminar Organizing Committee:

Bianca Sieveritz
Rob Campbell
Maggi Mars-Brisbin
Yunhui Zheng
Jonathan Ward
Lauren Dembeck
Jigyasa Arora
Maéva Techer