{
  "id": 15684965,
  "title": "Bee phylosymbiosis: the relative importance of host phylogeny, behavioral traits, and environment",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/19/bee-phylosymbiosis-the-relative-importance-of-host-phylogeny",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-19T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.19.760025v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Phylosymbiotic research explores how microbiomes mirror their hosts' evolutionary history, potentially elucidating the development of host-microbe connections. However, the significance of host phylogeny, behavioral traits, and environment in shaping bee microbiomes remains uncertain. To address this, we pooled 16S rRNA metabarcoding data from 178 bee species to examine how host phylogeny and ecological traits influence the bacterial communities residing within them.\n\nOur findings suggest that bee microbiomes exhibit a moderate degree of phylosymbiosis. Bees classified as corbiculates—those possessing pollen-carrying structures known as pollen baskets—tended to harbor more diverse and lineage-specific microbial communities, while non-corbiculates were predominantly populated by Wolbachia. Across all bee taxa, Wolbachia consistently demonstrated a negative relationship with Lactobacillus, another bacterial genus.\n\nMoreover, our study revealed that host ecological traits had limited impact on the composition of bee-associated microbial communities. Eusocial bees, which exhibit complex social structures, did develop distinct microbiomes; however, this effect was largely attributable to their host phylogeny. Climate also proved to have no universal effect on bee microbiomes, but within certain genera, microbial communities were more homogeneous among bees residing in arid and semi-arid regions compared to those in other climatic zones. Overall, these results indicate that the overarching patterns observed in bee microbiomes primarily arise from lineage-specific host-microbe associations, with ecological traits exerting only a weak influence, often specific to individual taxonomic groups.",
  "summary": "Phylosymbiotic studies investigate how microbiomes recapitulate their host phylogeny and can thus reveal the evolution of host-microbe relationships. In bees, the extent of phylosymbiosis and its relationship with host ecological traits remain unclear. We integrated public bee 16S rRNA metabarcoding data to investigate how host phylogeny and ecological traits affected the bacterial community…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}