
Short communication: Survival of honey bees (Apis mellifera) infected with Crithidia mellificae (Langridge and McGhee: ATCC® 30254™) in the presence of Nosema ceranae
Author(s) -
Mariano Higes,
Cristina RodríguezGarcía,
Tamara GómezMoracho,
Aránzazu Meana,
Carolina Bartolomé,
Xulio Maside,
Laura Barrios,
Raquel Martín-Hernández
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
spanish journal of agricultural research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.337
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 2171-9292
pISSN - 1695-971X
DOI - 10.5424/sjar/2016143-8722
Subject(s) - nosema ceranae , biology , nosema , honey bee , spore , honey bees , microsporidia , zoology , parasite hosting , microbiology and biotechnology , veterinary medicine , botany , medicine , world wide web , computer science
Crithidia mellificae, a trypanosomatid parasite of Apis mellifera, has been proposed to be one of the pathogens responsible for the serious honey bee colony losses produced worldwide in the last decade, either alone or in association with Nosema ceranae. Since this pathogenic effect contradicts the results of the experimental infections originally performed by Langridge and McGhee nearly 40 years ago, we investigated the potential linkage of this protozoan with colony decline under laboratory conditions. Nosema-free and trypanosomatid-free honey bees from three different colonies were experimentally infected with fresh C. mellificae spheroid forms (reference strain ATCC30254), with N. ceranae fresh spores and with both parasites at the same time. Replicate cages were kept at 27 °C and used to analyse survival. C. mellificae spheroid forms did not reduce significantly the survival of the worker bees (64.5% at 30 days post-infection vs. 77.8% for the uninfected bees used as controls; differences were non statistically significant) under these experimental conditions. In contrast, the cages infected with N. ceranae exhibited higher rates of mortality from the 20th day post-infection onwards, irrespective of the presence of C. mellificae, suggesting that the spheroid forms of the latter have no pathological effect on A. melliferaINIA-FEDER (RTA2013-00042-C10-06 and E-RTA2014-00003-C03)S