Abejas: de la evolución a la inteligencia artificial
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CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #16 - Bees – from evolution to artificial intelligence
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:10:05 - 00:00:15:22
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:15:24 - 00:00:39:07
Abigail Acton
Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery With me, Abigail Acton. Bees are vital to food security, but they're under threat. The EU estimates pollinators such as honeybees contribute at least €22 billion each year to the European agricultural industry. They ensure pollination for over 80% of crops and wild plants in Europe. They're so important that the United Nations has designated the 20th of May as world bee day.
00:00:39:09 - 00:01:01:00
Abigail Acton
The bee colonies are under pressure from climate change pests, chemical fertilizers and habitat loss. One in ten bee and butterfly species in Europe are on the verge of extinction and one third of them are in decline. Clearly, a better understanding of the ways bees interact with their environments is needed. Can we bring our technical innovations to the rescue by making hives more resilient?
00:01:01:02 - 00:01:20:16
Abigail Acton
Does a deeper understanding of the physiology of bees shine a light on how they interact? The word microbiome has filtered through into our everyday lives. The notion of intestinal diversity and gut health is something that's used widely to sell food supplements and get us eating sauerkraut. But what about bees? Does their microbiome impact upon their brains and the way they process their environments?
00:01:20:18 - 00:01:42:12
Abigail Acton
And what about the plant's perspective? How have plants evolved to invite some insects and deter others to leaf chewing? Insects influence the evolution of flowers and the messages they send to pollinators? Fortunately, today, we have three guests whose projects have been supported by the EU Horizon 2020 program, putting them in the perfect position to answer these and other questions.
00:01:42:18 - 00:01:59:04
Abigail Acton
Welcome to Hallel Schreier, who is co-founder and head of research at BeeWise, a company that is bringing cutting edge technology to the art of beekeeping by focusing on the intersection of software, artificial intelligence, hardware and biology. Hallel is helping to bring beehives into the 21st century. Welcome.
00:01:59:04 - 00:02:00:10
Hallel Schreier
Hello, Abigail.
00:02:00:12 - 00:02:28:20
Abigail Acton
Stuart Campbell is a natural Environment Research Council Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, where he leads the laboratory in the chemical ecology and evolution of insect plant interactions. He is academically for the ecological metabolomics group. Welcome, Stuart. Hello, Juanito Liberti is an evolutionary molecular ecologist based at the University of Lausanne. He is interested in understanding how social interactions, both those that are beneficial and those that generate conflict, are shaped by natural selection.
00:02:28:22 - 00:02:35:15
Abigail Acton
Juanito is currently studying how the gut brain axis manifests itself through the social behavior of honey bees. Welcome, Juanito.
00:02:35:19 - 00:02:37:04
Joanito Liberti
Hi, everyone.
00:02:37:06 - 00:02:52:11
Abigail Acton
I'm going to turn to Hallel first, if I may. Hallel The BeeHome project, which was run by your start up Be wise, harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to support bee colonies within the hive and help crop growers protect their bees. What are the challenges that makes the use of AI relevant, please?
00:02:52:13 - 00:03:24:18
Hallel Schreier
Well, I think in in precision agriculture in general and beekeeping isn't that different in that sense. What we're trying to do is address the needs of each individual colony according to its specific state. So that has a few parts to it for us to gathering data and inferring the state of the of the hive. And then it's administering procedures and various operations on the hive based on that data.
00:03:24:20 - 00:03:37:15
Hallel Schreier
So AI is part of all of that. So it starts with gathering the data and we're using computer vision and AI to infer the hive states from our sensors.
00:03:37:17 - 00:03:48:18
Abigail Acton
So if I could stop you for a second, particularly, what are the challenges that hive colonies are facing? That AI is is well placed to address. So can it, for example, identify influxes of predators or.
00:03:48:20 - 00:04:11:09
Hallel Schreier
Sure. Okay. So generally we can assess the state of the hive. If it's a weak hive which have having any type of trouble or problems such as pests, infestation and hunger harm queen which is laying eggs, eggs, property, all of that we can infer from our sensors using A.I..
00:04:11:13 - 00:04:19:09
Abigail Acton
And for example, you mentioned there the notion of hunger. How how would sensors within a hive let you know if there was enough food for the bees or not?
00:04:19:11 - 00:04:47:22
Hallel Schreier
Well, you don't have. We can. We can, first of all, you know, sense the amount of honey and and pollen in the hive. So that's something we have direct, direct data of. Right. And then we can also infer their activity based on various parameters and sensors. So so that gives us a pretty good idea of of how well the hives are doing.
00:04:47:24 - 00:04:55:22
Abigail Acton
Right. And could you tell me a little bit about how the hives are designed? I mean, how many colonies can you support in one of your hives, for example?
00:04:55:24 - 00:05:14:15
Hallel Schreier
So our device to BeeHome is not a single hive. It's like a full apiary or a like a small, small grazing area. And it has it houses between 20 and 40 hives depends on the season and on the youth.
00:05:14:17 - 00:05:19:09
Abigail Acton
And how many bees would that be? More or less. Not down to the one, but approximately.
00:05:19:11 - 00:05:24:09
Hallel Schreier
Well, that also depends on the season, but it will, you know, could be around to a million bees.
00:05:24:09 - 00:05:32:00
Abigail Acton
Wow. Fascinating. Goodness me. All in one one big. And what sort of like a series hives or is it one big box? Could you describe it a bit for us?
00:05:32:04 - 00:06:01:09
Hallel Schreier
Sure. So it is a series of hives which are divided from each other. There are partitions dividing the hives within within the device, and our hives on both sides of the of the device and like a corridor and the center where the robotic mechanism is. And that's where, you know, that's where we extract the frames, that's where our sensors are and that's where we do our operations within that corridor.
00:06:01:11 - 00:06:03:19
Abigail Acton
With all those bees, how do they know which hive to go to?
00:06:03:21 - 00:06:21:21
Hallel Schreier
So they first of all, bees, you know, they sense their own hives based on a few cure for its smell and visual cues. So we have specific color patterns on the on our device which help them get back to their own to their own hive.
00:06:22:02 - 00:06:31:11
Abigail Acton
So it helps them orientate themselves. Okay. Right. And so what's the principal idea behind this, then? Is it to preserve colonies? Is it to support farmers? And what are the other benefits?
00:06:31:14 - 00:07:03:19
Hallel Schreier
So I would say it's both. It's first of all to preserve Hive and create a platform to be able to better treat the hives and treat each hive according to its individual needs and make sure we track problems on time and treat them and make sure the hives do not collapse. So that's one aspect of it. And then the other is which is which have closely related to the first one is being able to supply farmers with the pollination they need.
00:07:03:19 - 00:07:14:12
Hallel Schreier
So farmers need strong and healthy hives for their crops. So so that's that's an outcome of maintaining a healthy bees.
00:07:14:14 - 00:07:29:22
Abigail Acton
And have you done any comparisons between how your hives using artificial intelligence are working in comparison to more traditional approaches? I mean, how much healthier, if I could use that word, are they how much better are they at preserving colonies? Do you have any idea about that?
00:07:29:24 - 00:07:55:18
Hallel Schreier
Sure. So we have we were tracking that. Obviously, we are able to reduce colony collapse by quite a bit. So, I mean, currently worldwide, it's, you know, between 30 and 40%. That's kind of the common common numbers in most countries. And, you know, we're able to reduce it to the 10 to 2 or even even below that. So that's.
00:07:55:18 - 00:08:07:18
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's a real impact. Yeah, that's a real impact. That's that's impressive. Okay. And how does it benefit farmers, apart from the fact that the colony is healthier? Is there something else that I mean, presumably it's is it easier to run a colony and look after them?
00:08:07:19 - 00:08:35:18
Hallel Schreier
So, I mean, we supply our data to the beekeeper, obviously, but we also have a designated app for the farmer as well. So the farmer can have visibility out to the hives which are in his fields and orchards. So, you know, currently when beekeepers bring their hives to the fields, farmers don't really have that much data as to what's really going on in the hive.
00:08:35:20 - 00:08:41:02
Abigail Acton
Can you tell me a little bit more about more specifically what kind of data, what what what is important for the farmers to know?
00:08:41:04 - 00:09:05:03
Hallel Schreier
Well, they want to know. I mean, they're interested in pollination. That's that's what they care about. But the way for them to make sure that they get the pollination they need is by making sure the hives they get are as strong and as promised. So they're interested in the amount of bees, the amount of brood that's there. Their main concern.
00:09:05:05 - 00:09:07:03
Abigail Acton
May be pest invasion and stuff like that too.
00:09:07:06 - 00:09:16:24
Hallel Schreier
Well, pest invasion one fit affects the bees. They they care about it because they care about the bit. They don't really they don't really care about the pest themselves.
00:09:16:24 - 00:09:29:07
Abigail Acton
No, sure. But do they? I mean, I was a bit curious about this notion of pest detection. I mean, how does the farmer get alerted that there is a pest in the hive and don't pests and hives work really very quickly? I mean, is it possible for the farmer to have enough time to actually do something about that?
00:09:29:12 - 00:09:31:00
Abigail Acton
Let's take that as an example. How would that.
00:09:31:00 - 00:09:39:07
Hallel Schreier
Work? So that's a very good question. So I mean, that's that's the kind of information we would supply to the beekeeper and I'd not necessarily to the farmer.
00:09:39:07 - 00:09:41:06
Abigail Acton
Yeah, sorry. Actually, I meant the beekeeper. Really? Yeah.
00:09:41:07 - 00:10:01:02
Hallel Schreier
And I mean, we can, we can assess the state of the hive and based on various parameters and know if there is a stronger pest infestation and, and they will get that information and we have a pest management system within our device which they can operate in such cases.
00:10:01:06 - 00:10:02:13
Abigail Acton
Okay. And what does that do?
00:10:02:16 - 00:10:06:18
Hallel Schreier
Well, I don't want I don't want to get into too much details here, but.
00:10:06:20 - 00:10:12:17
Abigail Acton
Okay. Don't have to. Too much detail. I'm just wondering how you'd eradicate a pest without eradicating the bees.
00:10:12:19 - 00:10:43:17
Hallel Schreier
That's actually a very good question, specifically because the main pest bees are suffering from which of the varroa mite. That's like the number one pest. Well, a lot of I mean, when you think about, you know, taxonomic, it's not that different from a bee. And that makes dealing with it challenging in a sense. So, I mean, currently beekeepers are using mainly chemicals which are not that good for various reasons and also not doing such a great job.
00:10:43:19 - 00:10:48:07
Hallel Schreier
So we're trying to introduce alternative methods of pest control.
00:10:48:12 - 00:11:02:12
Abigail Acton
Okay. Are you finding that the there is much uptake amongst beekeepers? Are people embracing this or are people regarding it's disruptive technology or people regarding it a little bit sort of, ooh, nervously or how how how's the market reacting?
00:11:02:14 - 00:11:24:18
Hallel Schreier
So the market is very excited. I mean, beekeepers are generally facing a crisis. You're probably aware of that. So they're they're looking for solutions. And so, you know, when we just kind of tell them about the idea, that's interesting. Interesting. But when they actually sit a device and they see the app, so it kind of makes sense that they are okay.
00:11:24:18 - 00:11:34:07
Hallel Schreier
And that makes perfect sense. And they're and they're really eager to try it. So, you know, currently we have a lot of orders which we're working to fulfill.
00:11:34:09 - 00:11:51:22
Abigail Acton
super. So it's going well. That's really excellent. Cool. Well, that sounds fantastic. Thank you very much. I'm going to turn to Stuart now. Stuart, your project was called DEFPOLL, and it considered the picture, if I can put it this way, from the plant's perspective. Your project set out to get a better understanding of the interaction between plant defense and the process of pollination.
00:11:51:24 - 00:12:01:02
Abigail Acton
How does plant defense relate to pollination? Defense to me, sounds like a reaction or an evolutionary process in the face of a threat. Is pollination somehow threatening? Tell me more about this.
00:12:01:05 - 00:12:27:01
Stuart Campbell
Yeah. So pollination by itself isn't a threat, but plants are attacked by a lot of other insects that feed on the leaves. And what happens in many plants is when when they're attacked by an insect. So a leaf, chewing insect. The plant will upregulate or increase the production of various natural chemicals that it uses to defend itself. And sometimes these compounds with these chemicals can end up in the flowers.
00:12:27:03 - 00:12:33:23
Stuart Campbell
And when they end up in the flowers, they can impact on the behavior of bees, the health of bees, and the overall performance and fitness of bees.
00:12:34:01 - 00:12:42:09
Abigail Acton
Okay, That's interesting. How I mean, what's the bee picking up? I mean, the bee doesn't munch on the petals of the flower. Is it in the pollen or.
00:12:42:09 - 00:13:07:20
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it's in the pollen and it's in the nectar. So plants produce two primary rewards for for bees and other other pollinating insects. One is nectar, which is a sugary sirup that's present in factories. And then the main source of protein for a lot of bees, particularly wild bees, is the pollen that they collect actively from the flowers and then bring back either to a colony in the case of a social insect or social bee or back to their burrow.
00:13:07:20 - 00:13:12:01
Stuart Campbell
If they're a solitary bee where they make a pollen ball and feed that to their young.
00:13:12:03 - 00:13:16:14
Abigail Acton
Right. And so that's chemicals within the pollen that might impact upon them potentially.
00:13:16:14 - 00:13:22:13
Stuart Campbell
Yeah. We actually don't we actually know very little about rice, chemical composition of pollen and how plants vary in their nutritional quality.
00:13:22:17 - 00:13:23:09
Abigail Acton
that's interesting.
00:13:23:12 - 00:13:25:18
Stuart Campbell
So that's one of the things we're interested in.
00:13:25:20 - 00:13:32:14
Abigail Acton
It seems slightly strange that we should know so little. Why hasn't this been studied more in-depth in the past, or is it the case that we've got better tools now and can do it better?
00:13:32:16 - 00:13:56:07
Stuart Campbell
It's a good question. So partly it's technological. So there's there's better techniques now for analyzing fairly minute quantities of pollen, which helps. Another is simply that there is a vast diversity of plant species which different bees interact with and feed on. And it's a rather daunting task to go about documenting all of that, all of that chemistry across all of those different plant species.
00:13:56:12 - 00:14:10:07
Abigail Acton
Yeah, that makes sense. You'd still think that perhaps the target species in terms of sort of economic worth would perhaps attract attention. I mean, apple blossom, for example, and pollen for apples would be you'd think people would be quite keen to work out exactly what was going on there.
00:14:10:08 - 00:14:29:23
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, I think I shouldn't. I mean, so apples also produce nectar. Yeah. So it varies again, by species. What resource? The bee or another insect is trying to acquire from a plant. So for some species, the primary resource they're consuming is the nectar. Then you might not be interested in the pollen. Sure. I mean, there's not a lot of work in this area, but there is some.
00:14:29:23 - 00:14:33:05
Stuart Campbell
So for some for some economic species, we do know this.
00:14:33:11 - 00:14:53:14
Abigail Acton
Right. And I'm interested in this because I'm wondering, I mean, the relationship between the Bee and the plant has been there forever and a day. So presumably they've worked their way around this balance between defense and pollination toxicity, not toxicity, etc.. Is this something that's kind of having an impact, particularly at the moment? Is there any reason for why it would be having an impact particularly?
00:14:53:16 - 00:15:30:19
Stuart Campbell
No. So to some extent. Bees like any insect consuming any plant part, will have evolved mechanisms for dealing with some of these natural defenses, natural chemicals. But despite this, an insect, any insect can't be perfectly adapted to deal with the whole range of things that might. So there is there is variation there as well. And so in situations, for example, where you have a reduction in the diversity of flowering plants due to habitat change, habitat fragmentation or land use change that can cause a reduction in the diversity of foraging material that the bees are able to visit.
00:15:30:21 - 00:15:38:24
Stuart Campbell
And so it's important to then know well are the species that are left there for the bees to consume, are those particularly nutritious, are they not? And so.
00:15:38:24 - 00:15:45:07
Abigail Acton
On? Yeah, and that makes sense. I suppose. Climate change comes into play a bit here with the change of species and range habitat range.
00:15:45:10 - 00:15:46:09
Stuart Campbell
Indeed, yeah. Yeah.
00:15:46:09 - 00:15:53:24
Abigail Acton
Right. So how to leaf chewing insects influence pollinators and the evolution of flowers. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?
00:15:54:05 - 00:16:24:06
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, sure. So the what we've been looking at is essentially the transport or production of these defensive compounds in flowers to see whether or not the evolution of a greater defense leads to some compromise at the level of pollination. So we compare a different plant species with different levels of defense, and we see whether or not the evolution of a greater amount of defense in the leaves has some negative consequence for for the bees.
00:16:24:06 - 00:16:43:01
Stuart Campbell
And we do this in a couple of ways, one of which is looking at the nutritional quality of pollen, which I mentioned. The other is looking at the volatile or scent bouquet of flowers and ascertaining whether or not changes to that scent bouquet change the behavior of bees, limit visitation and limit the amount of pollination that might happen.
00:16:43:03 - 00:16:46:12
Abigail Acton
That's absolutely fascinating. And what have you been finding?
00:16:46:14 - 00:16:51:06
Stuart Campbell
So if we find some we've so there's lots of interesting stuff here.
00:16:51:08 - 00:16:53:01
Abigail Acton
Go for all of it. I want all of it.
00:16:53:03 - 00:17:24:17
Stuart Campbell
Okay. So the yeah, the general finding is that when a plant is under any stress that's attacked by a leaf chewing insect or also drought stress, we've been looking at there's a reduction in the visitation rate. How this happens differs a lot between plant species. So in some plant species, it seems clear that there's an increase in the production of some odor molecules produced by flowers, but also leaves which may have a repellent or deterrent effect on on visitors.
00:17:24:19 - 00:17:44:13
Stuart Campbell
In other cases, it seems like that stress is causing the plant to almost shut down. It's it's it's floral scent bouquet. And we think it's it's the shutting down of that book that makes the flowers less attractive. They're no longer emitting the attractive sense they used to. And the bees, as a result, choose to go to other plants.
00:17:44:15 - 00:17:58:03
Abigail Acton
What's the relationship itself, pollinators here? I mean, are you finding. I don't know. This is a kind of reductio ad absurdum. You're finding that the the, the self pollinators have have much greater defense in their lives. Is that. Is it as simple as that?
00:17:58:05 - 00:18:23:07
Stuart Campbell
It's a that's a great question. And the short answer is yes, that's true. it's a bit more complicated. But it does seem to be the case that as a cell species comprise about 10 to 15% of all flowering plant species. So most flowering plant species are actually not something they're out crossing. To some extent, there's a there's a significant minority, however, that are purely self fertilizing, so they don't rely on a pollinator at all.
00:18:23:09 - 00:18:47:15
Stuart Campbell
And within those those plant species, we we tend to find a greater investment in this response that they mount when they get attacked. So in the solving species, when they get hit by a leaf chewing herbivore, they upregulate a lot more defensive chemistry. And we think one reason they're able to do that is because there's no negative consequence at the flower level for that upregulation.
00:18:47:19 - 00:18:53:18
Abigail Acton
Okay, so they can go full out on that because they just don't care if you could put the word care into the concept of a plant's behavior.
00:18:53:23 - 00:18:54:17
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, precisely.
00:18:54:18 - 00:19:04:18
Abigail Acton
Yeah. So this is really very interesting. But what's the potential impact actually, of your findings? Is there any impact on the possibility of crop yields or anything like that? How can this be applied to a certain extent?
00:19:04:20 - 00:19:37:08
Stuart Campbell
There may be some impact on crop yields. It would depend on, again, on the crop species. Many, many crop species, not obviously our grain species like maize and wheat. These are these are wind pollinated, but lots of fruit and vegetable crops are pollinated by not just honeybees, but wild bees as well. And it is possible that if we are breeding plants for greater defense against pests, or if we are applying compounds which allow the plant to mount a response against pests or pathogens, this may have an impact on crop yields.
00:19:37:08 - 00:19:42:22
Stuart Campbell
We don't actually know much about this. It's something we're hoping to get to in my group, maybe in a year's time.
00:19:42:24 - 00:19:55:04
Abigail Acton
But that has an impact on a genetic modification, doesn't it? I mean, if you create genetically a plant that is better able to resist pests that actually might have an impact possibly on its ability to attract pollinators, it could.
00:19:55:05 - 00:20:29:20
Stuart Campbell
Yeah. I mean, there would be no distinction there between sort of a conventional breeding approach which would do the same thing and genetic modification. Any any breeding procedure which created a higher level of defense in the plant could have this this extended consequence at the flower level. The nice thing or the attractive feature of doing something like CRISPR editing, for example, or some other form of genetic modification is that you could presumably also look and specifically target compounds or natural defenses in leaf tissue, but limit the expression of those those compounds in floral tissue.
00:20:29:24 - 00:20:35:15
Abigail Acton
Or maybe you could amplify the expression of the scent bouquet in the floral to compensate for the, you know, go the other way.
00:20:35:16 - 00:20:47:21
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, indeed. And there's been, again, relatively little research looking at breeding for greater attraction of flowers, I would say, compared to the amount of research we've put into pest resistance.
00:20:48:00 - 00:20:54:03
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's really fascinating. Thank you so much. Does anyone have any questions for Stuart or any observations to make on what he's been saying? Yeah, we need to.
00:20:54:08 - 00:21:17:19
Joanito Liberti
Have a question. I guess the is it known that whether the production of these compounds that are for best resistance are physiologically related with the with the flowering? What I mean is that the more you invest in reproduction perhaps the less resources you have to invest in in pest and, and pest resistance. And whether it's such a comparative analysis have been done across plants.
00:21:17:19 - 00:21:44:08
Stuart Campbell
And do we know something about that? Yeah, it's a great question. Yeah. So in general in plants we see what you would call a trade off between the amount they invest in defense and the amount of resources they have left for reproduction, either in the form of an investment in flowers or investment in seeds. What we find is that the nature of that relationship changes depending on how reliant the plant is on pollinators.
00:21:44:10 - 00:21:58:06
Stuart Campbell
So that's a steeper relationship or a stronger trade off in out crossing species, cross-pollinating species which require pollinators so heavily that they simply pay a greater cost when they when they invest in defense.
00:21:58:08 - 00:22:16:08
Abigail Acton
It's kind of universal. I don't know. I mean, I was delighted by your research and absolutely fascinated by it. But when you really do think about it, this notion of investing energy in defense or procreation is pretty universal, actually. I mean, you know, from down the pub on a Friday night through to Impala in the Serengeti, I mean, it's, you know, it's universal now.
00:22:16:10 - 00:22:27:03
Joanito Liberti
Yeah. All organisms face a limited pool of resources. And yeah, all wild species have evolved to best partitioned those resources depending on their environments.
00:22:27:05 - 00:22:43:19
Abigail Acton
All species, really, I guess. Yeah. Okay, fine. Well, thank you very much for Stuart. I'm going to move on now to Juanito. Actually, when you say your project also was fascinating, you were considering the gut brain axis in bees. So I'd love you to tell us more about that. Why did your project BRAIN select bees to consider?
00:22:43:21 - 00:23:16:15
Joanito Liberti
And there's been a lot of attention in recent years on this topic of the gut brain axis, because it's becoming increasingly clear that bacteria not only influence the gut and immune system, but it also but also our brain. And so from a clinical perspective, we've been interested in trying to understand whether we can, for example, first understand his relationship with the bacteria affect the brain and the behavior consequently, but also whether we can design them treatments for some of these neurodegenerative diseases that are affected by the gut microbiota.
00:23:16:17 - 00:23:49:16
Joanito Liberti
However, all these studies have looked into rodent models, mostly from this clinical perspective, but we can think about that. This relationship is probably very ancient because microbial simians were already there when the first neural systems evolved. But we know very little about these, and these in particularly are very highly social organisms that live in in societies which we define as super organisms and they have division of labor, they have very complex structuring of societies.
00:23:49:16 - 00:23:59:19
Joanito Liberti
So we can also ask the question whether the gut microbiota not only influences individual behavior, but whether it has an effect at the level of an entire animal society.
00:23:59:21 - 00:24:07:18
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's fascinating. And were there any other reasons why you would consider bees, particularly after all, ants are, you know, highly complex societies as well?
00:24:07:20 - 00:24:34:17
Joanito Liberti
The reason is that there's been a lot of work done over the past ten years on the gut microbiota of honeybees. So we know exactly what bacteria are there. It's a easy model to work with in the lab because we can just extract the bees when they are in Cuba. And if we prevent them from socially interacting with other bees when they become adults, they will be germ free in their intestine, which makes it a perfect experimental model because then we can just feed back the bacteria or not.
00:24:34:17 - 00:24:53:15
Joanito Liberti
And we can produce these with and without the bacteria, with any combination of the bacteria we want because we we have cultured them in the lab and we have a big collection in the freezer. And and so we can see whether these bees are different in physiology, what happens in their brain, what happens at the level of behavior.
00:24:53:17 - 00:25:02:02
Abigail Acton
So it's basically like a clean slate. And that must be quite unique in the animal world, really, to be able to have a a gut system that actually is almost sterile.
00:25:02:07 - 00:25:07:24
Joanito Liberti
Yes. Without the need to use antibiotics. It's very, very cool. We can do a lot with that.
00:25:08:01 - 00:25:23:01
Abigail Acton
And I imagine using antibiotics must be challenging. It's usually how it's done. I mean, in murine models, in mouse models, if you use antibiotics to clean out the gut of the animal that's being examined in the first place and then you introduce bacteria, is there any chance that the antibiotics you might not know the answer to this one?
00:25:23:01 - 00:25:37:04
Abigail Acton
I'm throwing it at you without having warned you beforehand. But is there any chance that the the antibiotics you use to clean the bacteria out have a lingering effect and could perhaps influence the way the new bacteria you introduce? Colonizes the gut?
00:25:37:09 - 00:25:55:12
Joanito Liberti
Yes. And it could also have a direct effect on the physiology of the animal itself. And we know actually this is the case. So this is a problem for experiments, because when you want to compare a treatment with a control, your control has an additional problem, which is that you use something that could affect directly the physiology and not because of your treatment.
00:25:55:17 - 00:26:04:02
Joanito Liberti
This is why we need these germ free systems where we can control all other factors and then look at what we are doing experimentally.
00:26:04:04 - 00:26:17:11
Abigail Acton
Okay, great. So bees are a great candidate. So how this is fascinating. How would you go about analyzing and interpreting the content of a B, gut and the relationship that has on their cognitive processes, their brains? How on earth do you do that? Tell us more.
00:26:17:13 - 00:26:43:06
Joanito Liberti
Yes. After we do these experimental manipulations, of course, we have to check whether they worked. And the way we do that is usually at the end of the experiments, we extract DNA from the guts. So we have to dissect the gut. In theory, we could also collect fecal samples from the gods, extract DNA, and then we sequence a gene that is called the sickness RNA, which is only present in prokaryotes and bacteria.
00:26:43:08 - 00:27:00:18
Joanito Liberti
And we compared the sequences with publicly available sequences and databases like that. We can identify all the bacteria that were present in the sample. And we also know their abundance. So we know that we have X amount of this bacterium and Y amounts of another bacterium and so on.
00:27:00:23 - 00:27:06:20
Abigail Acton
So this research is also benefiting massively from from advances in technology that make this sort of sequencing possible,
00:27:06:22 - 00:27:32:23
Joanito Liberti
Sure. Yes, we do a lot of things with genetics also to look at gene expression in the brain. For example, we look with RNA sequencing and so on. It would have never been possible just ten years ago, probably were to use all these tools and to look at the behavior. We're particularly interested in the social behavior, as I said before, and we have a fancy technology that is called automated behavioral tracking system.
00:27:33:00 - 00:27:55:20
Joanito Liberti
We have a series of camera infrared cameras that can detect the position and orientation of little tags, which we can glue on top of the thorax of the bees. These tags look like little QR codes. They have a unique pattern, so they work like a system of scanners and barcodes. And the cashier of a supermarket and the camera systems scan these tags multiple times per second.
00:27:55:20 - 00:28:16:07
Joanito Liberti
And we can just so we can tag the bees with them under this system in nest boxes, and then just let them do what they have to do for about a week, for example. And at the end we can know all the patterns of interaction. So we know exactly how everybody has interacted with other bees, how many times in what parts of the nest and so on.
00:28:16:07 - 00:28:35:15
Joanito Liberti
So we generate a huge amount of data and then we can we can analyze it in different ways. And one way of done these is to look at how the bees interacted with their heads and just count the amount of times they interacted and compared bees that had the gut microbiota with bees that didn't have the gut microbiota.
00:28:35:17 - 00:28:38:10
Abigail Acton
What makes the interaction with the head particularly important?
00:28:38:12 - 00:29:00:13
Joanito Liberti
This is because bees, as I said, are highly social organisms, and in these head to head interactions they do two or three different things where they can clean each other, they can transfer information to them. And so they, they infinite with each other or through the fluxes, they usually exchange fluids. So nectar, which is eventually stored as honey.
00:29:00:15 - 00:29:07:20
Joanito Liberti
We believe that the gut microbiota has an effect on these transfer of nutrients and information within the hive.
00:29:07:21 - 00:29:15:10
Abigail Acton
And tonight it's a new word. So the bird antenna, you can actually make a verb. Antony That's fascinating. Yeah. So tell me, what did you find?
00:29:15:12 - 00:29:47:16
Joanito Liberti
So the most fascinating result that we had from this research is that indeed the gut microbiota promotes the social behavior of the bees. We found that there was about 20% more social interactions. The other heads when bees hosted the gut microbiome compared to jump bees. And not only that, we found that even for me, more interestingly, is that these interactions became more structured, meaning that some that be studied to interact much more often with specific nest mates.
00:29:47:16 - 00:30:02:24
Joanito Liberti
So we do other specific bees and not so much with the rest of the group, whereas in the control that was germ free, these interactions were much more equal in the sense that each be interacted more or less the same amount of times with the other bees. But overall they had less.
00:30:02:24 - 00:30:05:17
Abigail Acton
Interaction, so less interaction and less discriminate.
00:30:05:19 - 00:30:06:10
Joanito Liberti
Yes.
00:30:06:12 - 00:30:08:16
Abigail Acton
And so then potentially less efficient.
00:30:08:18 - 00:30:20:23
Joanito Liberti
This is what we believe would be the case, because as I said, what they do a lot of fundamental behaviors head to head. And so we believe that the the flow of nutrients and information may be affected in the home.
00:30:21:00 - 00:30:33:07
Abigail Acton
So what I'm wondering then is beyond the yielding of really insightful data with regards to behavior and got brain axis, what what's the practical implication on this of this?
00:30:33:07 - 00:31:00:04
Joanito Liberti
RATHER Well, of course we are interested from an evolutionary perspective, as I said before, and I hope that this kind of research will prompt similar investigation in other social organisms to see whether the same kind of social behaviors are affected on one hand, and what are the molecular mechanisms that regulate these interactions between the gut microbiota and the brain are conserved or not, or they use different different proximate mechanisms.
00:31:00:06 - 00:31:25:21
Joanito Liberti
Eventually, I hope that we in the future will be able to design treatments. For example, probiotics or probiotics that could improve the social behavior of these animals that are very important to us and the collective performance. So that's they will become even better at collecting, extracting and storing the resources that they collect. Free environments.
00:31:25:23 - 00:31:50:19
Abigail Acton
Hallel I'd like to bring you in here because this seems quite interesting here. So if you were to come up with a way of using artificial intelligence to analyze the data present, for example, in the feces to pick up whether there was a lack of of bacterial diversity or, for example, if there were certain bacteria missing that would make the bees more efficient in their communication processes, that could be a real positive for beer.
00:31:50:19 - 00:31:52:10
Abigail Acton
What do you think? Is it stretching it?
00:31:52:12 - 00:32:03:11
Hallel Schreier
Well, an interesting prospect, I would say. It's, I'll need to think about it a bit more if it's really feasible or not.
00:32:03:13 - 00:32:20:04
Abigail Acton
But you guys are in touch with each other. But yeah, I mean, if it's really having an impact, if it does have an impact, as it seems to indicate on their ability to function effectively and efficiently, then that's something perhaps that that artificial intelligence could be used to look at. Maybe. Does anyone have any questions for Juanito? Because it's a really fascinating subject.
00:32:20:05 - 00:32:21:06
Abigail Acton
Yeah, Stuart.
00:32:21:08 - 00:32:46:20
Stuart Campbell
I have a question, actually. Yeah. So and you sort of alluded to this towards the end, but honeybees are obviously a domesticated species or at least significantly partially domesticated species. Have you compared the gut microbiomes of wild species like things like bumblebees, for example, to see whether they host a greater diversity of bacteria in their guts?
00:32:46:22 - 00:33:15:22
Joanito Liberti
Not personally, but there is a lot of work going on on this. There's a bumblebee. Gut microbiota is well-characterized. There's new research on stingless bees. And what is very interesting is that they all seem to host the same set of microbial species, but then the strains that these bacteria are and that there are distinct between the different bee genera. And so this seems to have been tied co-evolution between the gut microbiota and these different host bees.
00:33:16:02 - 00:33:32:05
Abigail Acton
Perhaps the point here is, is there a wider spread of bacteria in the gut of wild bees, if we can call them, you know, wild bees just generally, you know, in comparison to bees that have been honeybees that have been bred is the wrong word. But yeah, that have been so closely associated the right word. is it.
00:33:32:05 - 00:33:38:04
Abigail Acton
Thank you. Okay, bred I mean, yeah, maybe we imagine that the wild bees are more diverse or what do you think?
00:33:38:08 - 00:34:05:07
Joanito Liberti
Actually, it seems to be the other way around. And there is research done in my in my research group where we're looking at strain level diversity, and we find that the honeybee hosts a much larger diversity than, for example, Apis cerana or other bee species. And we we don't know exactly why is that? It could be because of the species area relationship.
00:34:05:08 - 00:34:33:01
Joanito Liberti
So there's more space for bacterial evolution within within a honeybee because the populations are larger and so on, and then compare, for example, with the bumble Bee or these other Asian honey bees, where it could be because of the management, because of the beekeeping industry, you know, are mixing hives from different geographical areas and so on. And that drives.
00:34:33:03 - 00:34:33:15
Abigail Acton
Diversity.
00:34:33:15 - 00:34:39:09
Joanito Liberti
More bacterial diversity. But we currently don't know. And it's a very fascinating question. Can I ask a follow up question?
00:34:39:10 - 00:34:41:01
Abigail Acton
Please do. Please do.
00:34:41:03 - 00:35:06:00
Stuart Campbell
Have you looked at any solitary bees? Because of course, like social bees are a relatively minor component of the 20,000 species of bee. I'm curious, like solitary bees might face different challenges and might have different gut microbiota just based on their their life history. So I am not completely sure. I mean, there are studies out there looking at solitary bees.
00:35:06:02 - 00:35:30:07
Joanito Liberti
I know recently, for example, someone has looked at the vulture bee to look at whether, for example, you know, how diet influences also the composition of this gut microbiome. If you have a shift in diet, you know, to eat meat compared to the pollen, either as diet, how does that affect the microbiome? And there seems to be some some different is it still in its early stage?
00:35:30:13 - 00:35:37:10
Joanito Liberti
There is much more work to do. Characterize the gut microbiota of other species that needs to be done.
00:35:37:12 - 00:35:53:22
Abigail Acton
Well, I think that's just brilliant and I think we'll leave it there. But I like the I like leaving this podcast, the note that there's more work to be done. I like more questions raised than answered each time. I think that's wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. This has been a really, really interesting episode, Right?
00:35:54:03 - 00:35:56:14
ALL
Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.
00:35:56:16 - 00:35:58:24
ALL
Thanks very much for having us. Thank you.
00:35:59:01 - 00:36:19:21
Abigail Acton
My great pleasure. My great pleasure. I wish you good luck, all of you, with the continuation of the work that you're doing. are you interested in what other EU funded projects are doing to uncover the secret lives of bees and other pollinators? The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by the Horizon 2020 program that are working in this area.
00:36:19:23 - 00:36:39:22
Abigail Acton
The website has articles and interviews that explore the results. Research being conducted in a very broad range of domain from zoonosis to zebrafish. There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look and see what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick.
00:36:39:24 - 00:36:52:00
Abigail Acton
We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line editorial at Cordis dot Europa dot EU. Until next time.
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:10:05 - 00:00:15:22
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:15:24 - 00:00:39:07
Abigail Acton
Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery With me, Abigail Acton. Bees are vital to food security, but they're under threat. The EU estimates pollinators such as honeybees contribute at least €22 billion each year to the European agricultural industry. They ensure pollination for over 80% of crops and wild plants in Europe. They're so important that the United Nations has designated the 20th of May as world bee day.
00:00:39:09 - 00:01:01:00
Abigail Acton
The bee colonies are under pressure from climate change pests, chemical fertilizers and habitat loss. One in ten bee and butterfly species in Europe are on the verge of extinction and one third of them are in decline. Clearly, a better understanding of the ways bees interact with their environments is needed. Can we bring our technical innovations to the rescue by making hives more resilient?
00:01:01:02 - 00:01:20:16
Abigail Acton
Does a deeper understanding of the physiology of bees shine a light on how they interact? The word microbiome has filtered through into our everyday lives. The notion of intestinal diversity and gut health is something that's used widely to sell food supplements and get us eating sauerkraut. But what about bees? Does their microbiome impact upon their brains and the way they process their environments?
00:01:20:18 - 00:01:42:12
Abigail Acton
And what about the plant's perspective? How have plants evolved to invite some insects and deter others to leaf chewing? Insects influence the evolution of flowers and the messages they send to pollinators? Fortunately, today, we have three guests whose projects have been supported by the EU Horizon 2020 program, putting them in the perfect position to answer these and other questions.
00:01:42:18 - 00:01:59:04
Abigail Acton
Welcome to Hallel Schreier, who is co-founder and head of research at BeeWise, a company that is bringing cutting edge technology to the art of beekeeping by focusing on the intersection of software, artificial intelligence, hardware and biology. Hallel is helping to bring beehives into the 21st century. Welcome.
00:01:59:04 - 00:02:00:10
Hallel Schreier
Hello, Abigail.
00:02:00:12 - 00:02:28:20
Abigail Acton
Stuart Campbell is a natural Environment Research Council Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, where he leads the laboratory in the chemical ecology and evolution of insect plant interactions. He is academically for the ecological metabolomics group. Welcome, Stuart. Hello, Juanito Liberti is an evolutionary molecular ecologist based at the University of Lausanne. He is interested in understanding how social interactions, both those that are beneficial and those that generate conflict, are shaped by natural selection.
00:02:28:22 - 00:02:35:15
Abigail Acton
Juanito is currently studying how the gut brain axis manifests itself through the social behavior of honey bees. Welcome, Juanito.
00:02:35:19 - 00:02:37:04
Joanito Liberti
Hi, everyone.
00:02:37:06 - 00:02:52:11
Abigail Acton
I'm going to turn to Hallel first, if I may. Hallel The BeeHome project, which was run by your start up Be wise, harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to support bee colonies within the hive and help crop growers protect their bees. What are the challenges that makes the use of AI relevant, please?
00:02:52:13 - 00:03:24:18
Hallel Schreier
Well, I think in in precision agriculture in general and beekeeping isn't that different in that sense. What we're trying to do is address the needs of each individual colony according to its specific state. So that has a few parts to it for us to gathering data and inferring the state of the of the hive. And then it's administering procedures and various operations on the hive based on that data.
00:03:24:20 - 00:03:37:15
Hallel Schreier
So AI is part of all of that. So it starts with gathering the data and we're using computer vision and AI to infer the hive states from our sensors.
00:03:37:17 - 00:03:48:18
Abigail Acton
So if I could stop you for a second, particularly, what are the challenges that hive colonies are facing? That AI is is well placed to address. So can it, for example, identify influxes of predators or.
00:03:48:20 - 00:04:11:09
Hallel Schreier
Sure. Okay. So generally we can assess the state of the hive. If it's a weak hive which have having any type of trouble or problems such as pests, infestation and hunger harm queen which is laying eggs, eggs, property, all of that we can infer from our sensors using A.I..
00:04:11:13 - 00:04:19:09
Abigail Acton
And for example, you mentioned there the notion of hunger. How how would sensors within a hive let you know if there was enough food for the bees or not?
00:04:19:11 - 00:04:47:22
Hallel Schreier
Well, you don't have. We can. We can, first of all, you know, sense the amount of honey and and pollen in the hive. So that's something we have direct, direct data of. Right. And then we can also infer their activity based on various parameters and sensors. So so that gives us a pretty good idea of of how well the hives are doing.
00:04:47:24 - 00:04:55:22
Abigail Acton
Right. And could you tell me a little bit about how the hives are designed? I mean, how many colonies can you support in one of your hives, for example?
00:04:55:24 - 00:05:14:15
Hallel Schreier
So our device to BeeHome is not a single hive. It's like a full apiary or a like a small, small grazing area. And it has it houses between 20 and 40 hives depends on the season and on the youth.
00:05:14:17 - 00:05:19:09
Abigail Acton
And how many bees would that be? More or less. Not down to the one, but approximately.
00:05:19:11 - 00:05:24:09
Hallel Schreier
Well, that also depends on the season, but it will, you know, could be around to a million bees.
00:05:24:09 - 00:05:32:00
Abigail Acton
Wow. Fascinating. Goodness me. All in one one big. And what sort of like a series hives or is it one big box? Could you describe it a bit for us?
00:05:32:04 - 00:06:01:09
Hallel Schreier
Sure. So it is a series of hives which are divided from each other. There are partitions dividing the hives within within the device, and our hives on both sides of the of the device and like a corridor and the center where the robotic mechanism is. And that's where, you know, that's where we extract the frames, that's where our sensors are and that's where we do our operations within that corridor.
00:06:01:11 - 00:06:03:19
Abigail Acton
With all those bees, how do they know which hive to go to?
00:06:03:21 - 00:06:21:21
Hallel Schreier
So they first of all, bees, you know, they sense their own hives based on a few cure for its smell and visual cues. So we have specific color patterns on the on our device which help them get back to their own to their own hive.
00:06:22:02 - 00:06:31:11
Abigail Acton
So it helps them orientate themselves. Okay. Right. And so what's the principal idea behind this, then? Is it to preserve colonies? Is it to support farmers? And what are the other benefits?
00:06:31:14 - 00:07:03:19
Hallel Schreier
So I would say it's both. It's first of all to preserve Hive and create a platform to be able to better treat the hives and treat each hive according to its individual needs and make sure we track problems on time and treat them and make sure the hives do not collapse. So that's one aspect of it. And then the other is which is which have closely related to the first one is being able to supply farmers with the pollination they need.
00:07:03:19 - 00:07:14:12
Hallel Schreier
So farmers need strong and healthy hives for their crops. So so that's that's an outcome of maintaining a healthy bees.
00:07:14:14 - 00:07:29:22
Abigail Acton
And have you done any comparisons between how your hives using artificial intelligence are working in comparison to more traditional approaches? I mean, how much healthier, if I could use that word, are they how much better are they at preserving colonies? Do you have any idea about that?
00:07:29:24 - 00:07:55:18
Hallel Schreier
Sure. So we have we were tracking that. Obviously, we are able to reduce colony collapse by quite a bit. So, I mean, currently worldwide, it's, you know, between 30 and 40%. That's kind of the common common numbers in most countries. And, you know, we're able to reduce it to the 10 to 2 or even even below that. So that's.
00:07:55:18 - 00:08:07:18
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's a real impact. Yeah, that's a real impact. That's that's impressive. Okay. And how does it benefit farmers, apart from the fact that the colony is healthier? Is there something else that I mean, presumably it's is it easier to run a colony and look after them?
00:08:07:19 - 00:08:35:18
Hallel Schreier
So, I mean, we supply our data to the beekeeper, obviously, but we also have a designated app for the farmer as well. So the farmer can have visibility out to the hives which are in his fields and orchards. So, you know, currently when beekeepers bring their hives to the fields, farmers don't really have that much data as to what's really going on in the hive.
00:08:35:20 - 00:08:41:02
Abigail Acton
Can you tell me a little bit more about more specifically what kind of data, what what what is important for the farmers to know?
00:08:41:04 - 00:09:05:03
Hallel Schreier
Well, they want to know. I mean, they're interested in pollination. That's that's what they care about. But the way for them to make sure that they get the pollination they need is by making sure the hives they get are as strong and as promised. So they're interested in the amount of bees, the amount of brood that's there. Their main concern.
00:09:05:05 - 00:09:07:03
Abigail Acton
May be pest invasion and stuff like that too.
00:09:07:06 - 00:09:16:24
Hallel Schreier
Well, pest invasion one fit affects the bees. They they care about it because they care about the bit. They don't really they don't really care about the pest themselves.
00:09:16:24 - 00:09:29:07
Abigail Acton
No, sure. But do they? I mean, I was a bit curious about this notion of pest detection. I mean, how does the farmer get alerted that there is a pest in the hive and don't pests and hives work really very quickly? I mean, is it possible for the farmer to have enough time to actually do something about that?
00:09:29:12 - 00:09:31:00
Abigail Acton
Let's take that as an example. How would that.
00:09:31:00 - 00:09:39:07
Hallel Schreier
Work? So that's a very good question. So I mean, that's that's the kind of information we would supply to the beekeeper and I'd not necessarily to the farmer.
00:09:39:07 - 00:09:41:06
Abigail Acton
Yeah, sorry. Actually, I meant the beekeeper. Really? Yeah.
00:09:41:07 - 00:10:01:02
Hallel Schreier
And I mean, we can, we can assess the state of the hive and based on various parameters and know if there is a stronger pest infestation and, and they will get that information and we have a pest management system within our device which they can operate in such cases.
00:10:01:06 - 00:10:02:13
Abigail Acton
Okay. And what does that do?
00:10:02:16 - 00:10:06:18
Hallel Schreier
Well, I don't want I don't want to get into too much details here, but.
00:10:06:20 - 00:10:12:17
Abigail Acton
Okay. Don't have to. Too much detail. I'm just wondering how you'd eradicate a pest without eradicating the bees.
00:10:12:19 - 00:10:43:17
Hallel Schreier
That's actually a very good question, specifically because the main pest bees are suffering from which of the varroa mite. That's like the number one pest. Well, a lot of I mean, when you think about, you know, taxonomic, it's not that different from a bee. And that makes dealing with it challenging in a sense. So, I mean, currently beekeepers are using mainly chemicals which are not that good for various reasons and also not doing such a great job.
00:10:43:19 - 00:10:48:07
Hallel Schreier
So we're trying to introduce alternative methods of pest control.
00:10:48:12 - 00:11:02:12
Abigail Acton
Okay. Are you finding that the there is much uptake amongst beekeepers? Are people embracing this or are people regarding it's disruptive technology or people regarding it a little bit sort of, ooh, nervously or how how how's the market reacting?
00:11:02:14 - 00:11:24:18
Hallel Schreier
So the market is very excited. I mean, beekeepers are generally facing a crisis. You're probably aware of that. So they're they're looking for solutions. And so, you know, when we just kind of tell them about the idea, that's interesting. Interesting. But when they actually sit a device and they see the app, so it kind of makes sense that they are okay.
00:11:24:18 - 00:11:34:07
Hallel Schreier
And that makes perfect sense. And they're and they're really eager to try it. So, you know, currently we have a lot of orders which we're working to fulfill.
00:11:34:09 - 00:11:51:22
Abigail Acton
super. So it's going well. That's really excellent. Cool. Well, that sounds fantastic. Thank you very much. I'm going to turn to Stuart now. Stuart, your project was called DEFPOLL, and it considered the picture, if I can put it this way, from the plant's perspective. Your project set out to get a better understanding of the interaction between plant defense and the process of pollination.
00:11:51:24 - 00:12:01:02
Abigail Acton
How does plant defense relate to pollination? Defense to me, sounds like a reaction or an evolutionary process in the face of a threat. Is pollination somehow threatening? Tell me more about this.
00:12:01:05 - 00:12:27:01
Stuart Campbell
Yeah. So pollination by itself isn't a threat, but plants are attacked by a lot of other insects that feed on the leaves. And what happens in many plants is when when they're attacked by an insect. So a leaf, chewing insect. The plant will upregulate or increase the production of various natural chemicals that it uses to defend itself. And sometimes these compounds with these chemicals can end up in the flowers.
00:12:27:03 - 00:12:33:23
Stuart Campbell
And when they end up in the flowers, they can impact on the behavior of bees, the health of bees, and the overall performance and fitness of bees.
00:12:34:01 - 00:12:42:09
Abigail Acton
Okay, That's interesting. How I mean, what's the bee picking up? I mean, the bee doesn't munch on the petals of the flower. Is it in the pollen or.
00:12:42:09 - 00:13:07:20
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it's in the pollen and it's in the nectar. So plants produce two primary rewards for for bees and other other pollinating insects. One is nectar, which is a sugary sirup that's present in factories. And then the main source of protein for a lot of bees, particularly wild bees, is the pollen that they collect actively from the flowers and then bring back either to a colony in the case of a social insect or social bee or back to their burrow.
00:13:07:20 - 00:13:12:01
Stuart Campbell
If they're a solitary bee where they make a pollen ball and feed that to their young.
00:13:12:03 - 00:13:16:14
Abigail Acton
Right. And so that's chemicals within the pollen that might impact upon them potentially.
00:13:16:14 - 00:13:22:13
Stuart Campbell
Yeah. We actually don't we actually know very little about rice, chemical composition of pollen and how plants vary in their nutritional quality.
00:13:22:17 - 00:13:23:09
Abigail Acton
that's interesting.
00:13:23:12 - 00:13:25:18
Stuart Campbell
So that's one of the things we're interested in.
00:13:25:20 - 00:13:32:14
Abigail Acton
It seems slightly strange that we should know so little. Why hasn't this been studied more in-depth in the past, or is it the case that we've got better tools now and can do it better?
00:13:32:16 - 00:13:56:07
Stuart Campbell
It's a good question. So partly it's technological. So there's there's better techniques now for analyzing fairly minute quantities of pollen, which helps. Another is simply that there is a vast diversity of plant species which different bees interact with and feed on. And it's a rather daunting task to go about documenting all of that, all of that chemistry across all of those different plant species.
00:13:56:12 - 00:14:10:07
Abigail Acton
Yeah, that makes sense. You'd still think that perhaps the target species in terms of sort of economic worth would perhaps attract attention. I mean, apple blossom, for example, and pollen for apples would be you'd think people would be quite keen to work out exactly what was going on there.
00:14:10:08 - 00:14:29:23
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, I think I shouldn't. I mean, so apples also produce nectar. Yeah. So it varies again, by species. What resource? The bee or another insect is trying to acquire from a plant. So for some species, the primary resource they're consuming is the nectar. Then you might not be interested in the pollen. Sure. I mean, there's not a lot of work in this area, but there is some.
00:14:29:23 - 00:14:33:05
Stuart Campbell
So for some for some economic species, we do know this.
00:14:33:11 - 00:14:53:14
Abigail Acton
Right. And I'm interested in this because I'm wondering, I mean, the relationship between the Bee and the plant has been there forever and a day. So presumably they've worked their way around this balance between defense and pollination toxicity, not toxicity, etc.. Is this something that's kind of having an impact, particularly at the moment? Is there any reason for why it would be having an impact particularly?
00:14:53:16 - 00:15:30:19
Stuart Campbell
No. So to some extent. Bees like any insect consuming any plant part, will have evolved mechanisms for dealing with some of these natural defenses, natural chemicals. But despite this, an insect, any insect can't be perfectly adapted to deal with the whole range of things that might. So there is there is variation there as well. And so in situations, for example, where you have a reduction in the diversity of flowering plants due to habitat change, habitat fragmentation or land use change that can cause a reduction in the diversity of foraging material that the bees are able to visit.
00:15:30:21 - 00:15:38:24
Stuart Campbell
And so it's important to then know well are the species that are left there for the bees to consume, are those particularly nutritious, are they not? And so.
00:15:38:24 - 00:15:45:07
Abigail Acton
On? Yeah, and that makes sense. I suppose. Climate change comes into play a bit here with the change of species and range habitat range.
00:15:45:10 - 00:15:46:09
Stuart Campbell
Indeed, yeah. Yeah.
00:15:46:09 - 00:15:53:24
Abigail Acton
Right. So how to leaf chewing insects influence pollinators and the evolution of flowers. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?
00:15:54:05 - 00:16:24:06
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, sure. So the what we've been looking at is essentially the transport or production of these defensive compounds in flowers to see whether or not the evolution of a greater defense leads to some compromise at the level of pollination. So we compare a different plant species with different levels of defense, and we see whether or not the evolution of a greater amount of defense in the leaves has some negative consequence for for the bees.
00:16:24:06 - 00:16:43:01
Stuart Campbell
And we do this in a couple of ways, one of which is looking at the nutritional quality of pollen, which I mentioned. The other is looking at the volatile or scent bouquet of flowers and ascertaining whether or not changes to that scent bouquet change the behavior of bees, limit visitation and limit the amount of pollination that might happen.
00:16:43:03 - 00:16:46:12
Abigail Acton
That's absolutely fascinating. And what have you been finding?
00:16:46:14 - 00:16:51:06
Stuart Campbell
So if we find some we've so there's lots of interesting stuff here.
00:16:51:08 - 00:16:53:01
Abigail Acton
Go for all of it. I want all of it.
00:16:53:03 - 00:17:24:17
Stuart Campbell
Okay. So the yeah, the general finding is that when a plant is under any stress that's attacked by a leaf chewing insect or also drought stress, we've been looking at there's a reduction in the visitation rate. How this happens differs a lot between plant species. So in some plant species, it seems clear that there's an increase in the production of some odor molecules produced by flowers, but also leaves which may have a repellent or deterrent effect on on visitors.
00:17:24:19 - 00:17:44:13
Stuart Campbell
In other cases, it seems like that stress is causing the plant to almost shut down. It's it's it's floral scent bouquet. And we think it's it's the shutting down of that book that makes the flowers less attractive. They're no longer emitting the attractive sense they used to. And the bees, as a result, choose to go to other plants.
00:17:44:15 - 00:17:58:03
Abigail Acton
What's the relationship itself, pollinators here? I mean, are you finding. I don't know. This is a kind of reductio ad absurdum. You're finding that the the, the self pollinators have have much greater defense in their lives. Is that. Is it as simple as that?
00:17:58:05 - 00:18:23:07
Stuart Campbell
It's a that's a great question. And the short answer is yes, that's true. it's a bit more complicated. But it does seem to be the case that as a cell species comprise about 10 to 15% of all flowering plant species. So most flowering plant species are actually not something they're out crossing. To some extent, there's a there's a significant minority, however, that are purely self fertilizing, so they don't rely on a pollinator at all.
00:18:23:09 - 00:18:47:15
Stuart Campbell
And within those those plant species, we we tend to find a greater investment in this response that they mount when they get attacked. So in the solving species, when they get hit by a leaf chewing herbivore, they upregulate a lot more defensive chemistry. And we think one reason they're able to do that is because there's no negative consequence at the flower level for that upregulation.
00:18:47:19 - 00:18:53:18
Abigail Acton
Okay, so they can go full out on that because they just don't care if you could put the word care into the concept of a plant's behavior.
00:18:53:23 - 00:18:54:17
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, precisely.
00:18:54:18 - 00:19:04:18
Abigail Acton
Yeah. So this is really very interesting. But what's the potential impact actually, of your findings? Is there any impact on the possibility of crop yields or anything like that? How can this be applied to a certain extent?
00:19:04:20 - 00:19:37:08
Stuart Campbell
There may be some impact on crop yields. It would depend on, again, on the crop species. Many, many crop species, not obviously our grain species like maize and wheat. These are these are wind pollinated, but lots of fruit and vegetable crops are pollinated by not just honeybees, but wild bees as well. And it is possible that if we are breeding plants for greater defense against pests, or if we are applying compounds which allow the plant to mount a response against pests or pathogens, this may have an impact on crop yields.
00:19:37:08 - 00:19:42:22
Stuart Campbell
We don't actually know much about this. It's something we're hoping to get to in my group, maybe in a year's time.
00:19:42:24 - 00:19:55:04
Abigail Acton
But that has an impact on a genetic modification, doesn't it? I mean, if you create genetically a plant that is better able to resist pests that actually might have an impact possibly on its ability to attract pollinators, it could.
00:19:55:05 - 00:20:29:20
Stuart Campbell
Yeah. I mean, there would be no distinction there between sort of a conventional breeding approach which would do the same thing and genetic modification. Any any breeding procedure which created a higher level of defense in the plant could have this this extended consequence at the flower level. The nice thing or the attractive feature of doing something like CRISPR editing, for example, or some other form of genetic modification is that you could presumably also look and specifically target compounds or natural defenses in leaf tissue, but limit the expression of those those compounds in floral tissue.
00:20:29:24 - 00:20:35:15
Abigail Acton
Or maybe you could amplify the expression of the scent bouquet in the floral to compensate for the, you know, go the other way.
00:20:35:16 - 00:20:47:21
Stuart Campbell
Yeah, indeed. And there's been, again, relatively little research looking at breeding for greater attraction of flowers, I would say, compared to the amount of research we've put into pest resistance.
00:20:48:00 - 00:20:54:03
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's really fascinating. Thank you so much. Does anyone have any questions for Stuart or any observations to make on what he's been saying? Yeah, we need to.
00:20:54:08 - 00:21:17:19
Joanito Liberti
Have a question. I guess the is it known that whether the production of these compounds that are for best resistance are physiologically related with the with the flowering? What I mean is that the more you invest in reproduction perhaps the less resources you have to invest in in pest and, and pest resistance. And whether it's such a comparative analysis have been done across plants.
00:21:17:19 - 00:21:44:08
Stuart Campbell
And do we know something about that? Yeah, it's a great question. Yeah. So in general in plants we see what you would call a trade off between the amount they invest in defense and the amount of resources they have left for reproduction, either in the form of an investment in flowers or investment in seeds. What we find is that the nature of that relationship changes depending on how reliant the plant is on pollinators.
00:21:44:10 - 00:21:58:06
Stuart Campbell
So that's a steeper relationship or a stronger trade off in out crossing species, cross-pollinating species which require pollinators so heavily that they simply pay a greater cost when they when they invest in defense.
00:21:58:08 - 00:22:16:08
Abigail Acton
It's kind of universal. I don't know. I mean, I was delighted by your research and absolutely fascinated by it. But when you really do think about it, this notion of investing energy in defense or procreation is pretty universal, actually. I mean, you know, from down the pub on a Friday night through to Impala in the Serengeti, I mean, it's, you know, it's universal now.
00:22:16:10 - 00:22:27:03
Joanito Liberti
Yeah. All organisms face a limited pool of resources. And yeah, all wild species have evolved to best partitioned those resources depending on their environments.
00:22:27:05 - 00:22:43:19
Abigail Acton
All species, really, I guess. Yeah. Okay, fine. Well, thank you very much for Stuart. I'm going to move on now to Juanito. Actually, when you say your project also was fascinating, you were considering the gut brain axis in bees. So I'd love you to tell us more about that. Why did your project BRAIN select bees to consider?
00:22:43:21 - 00:23:16:15
Joanito Liberti
And there's been a lot of attention in recent years on this topic of the gut brain axis, because it's becoming increasingly clear that bacteria not only influence the gut and immune system, but it also but also our brain. And so from a clinical perspective, we've been interested in trying to understand whether we can, for example, first understand his relationship with the bacteria affect the brain and the behavior consequently, but also whether we can design them treatments for some of these neurodegenerative diseases that are affected by the gut microbiota.
00:23:16:17 - 00:23:49:16
Joanito Liberti
However, all these studies have looked into rodent models, mostly from this clinical perspective, but we can think about that. This relationship is probably very ancient because microbial simians were already there when the first neural systems evolved. But we know very little about these, and these in particularly are very highly social organisms that live in in societies which we define as super organisms and they have division of labor, they have very complex structuring of societies.
00:23:49:16 - 00:23:59:19
Joanito Liberti
So we can also ask the question whether the gut microbiota not only influences individual behavior, but whether it has an effect at the level of an entire animal society.
00:23:59:21 - 00:24:07:18
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's fascinating. And were there any other reasons why you would consider bees, particularly after all, ants are, you know, highly complex societies as well?
00:24:07:20 - 00:24:34:17
Joanito Liberti
The reason is that there's been a lot of work done over the past ten years on the gut microbiota of honeybees. So we know exactly what bacteria are there. It's a easy model to work with in the lab because we can just extract the bees when they are in Cuba. And if we prevent them from socially interacting with other bees when they become adults, they will be germ free in their intestine, which makes it a perfect experimental model because then we can just feed back the bacteria or not.
00:24:34:17 - 00:24:53:15
Joanito Liberti
And we can produce these with and without the bacteria, with any combination of the bacteria we want because we we have cultured them in the lab and we have a big collection in the freezer. And and so we can see whether these bees are different in physiology, what happens in their brain, what happens at the level of behavior.
00:24:53:17 - 00:25:02:02
Abigail Acton
So it's basically like a clean slate. And that must be quite unique in the animal world, really, to be able to have a a gut system that actually is almost sterile.
00:25:02:07 - 00:25:07:24
Joanito Liberti
Yes. Without the need to use antibiotics. It's very, very cool. We can do a lot with that.
00:25:08:01 - 00:25:23:01
Abigail Acton
And I imagine using antibiotics must be challenging. It's usually how it's done. I mean, in murine models, in mouse models, if you use antibiotics to clean out the gut of the animal that's being examined in the first place and then you introduce bacteria, is there any chance that the antibiotics you might not know the answer to this one?
00:25:23:01 - 00:25:37:04
Abigail Acton
I'm throwing it at you without having warned you beforehand. But is there any chance that the the antibiotics you use to clean the bacteria out have a lingering effect and could perhaps influence the way the new bacteria you introduce? Colonizes the gut?
00:25:37:09 - 00:25:55:12
Joanito Liberti
Yes. And it could also have a direct effect on the physiology of the animal itself. And we know actually this is the case. So this is a problem for experiments, because when you want to compare a treatment with a control, your control has an additional problem, which is that you use something that could affect directly the physiology and not because of your treatment.
00:25:55:17 - 00:26:04:02
Joanito Liberti
This is why we need these germ free systems where we can control all other factors and then look at what we are doing experimentally.
00:26:04:04 - 00:26:17:11
Abigail Acton
Okay, great. So bees are a great candidate. So how this is fascinating. How would you go about analyzing and interpreting the content of a B, gut and the relationship that has on their cognitive processes, their brains? How on earth do you do that? Tell us more.
00:26:17:13 - 00:26:43:06
Joanito Liberti
Yes. After we do these experimental manipulations, of course, we have to check whether they worked. And the way we do that is usually at the end of the experiments, we extract DNA from the guts. So we have to dissect the gut. In theory, we could also collect fecal samples from the gods, extract DNA, and then we sequence a gene that is called the sickness RNA, which is only present in prokaryotes and bacteria.
00:26:43:08 - 00:27:00:18
Joanito Liberti
And we compared the sequences with publicly available sequences and databases like that. We can identify all the bacteria that were present in the sample. And we also know their abundance. So we know that we have X amount of this bacterium and Y amounts of another bacterium and so on.
00:27:00:23 - 00:27:06:20
Abigail Acton
So this research is also benefiting massively from from advances in technology that make this sort of sequencing possible,
00:27:06:22 - 00:27:32:23
Joanito Liberti
Sure. Yes, we do a lot of things with genetics also to look at gene expression in the brain. For example, we look with RNA sequencing and so on. It would have never been possible just ten years ago, probably were to use all these tools and to look at the behavior. We're particularly interested in the social behavior, as I said before, and we have a fancy technology that is called automated behavioral tracking system.
00:27:33:00 - 00:27:55:20
Joanito Liberti
We have a series of camera infrared cameras that can detect the position and orientation of little tags, which we can glue on top of the thorax of the bees. These tags look like little QR codes. They have a unique pattern, so they work like a system of scanners and barcodes. And the cashier of a supermarket and the camera systems scan these tags multiple times per second.
00:27:55:20 - 00:28:16:07
Joanito Liberti
And we can just so we can tag the bees with them under this system in nest boxes, and then just let them do what they have to do for about a week, for example. And at the end we can know all the patterns of interaction. So we know exactly how everybody has interacted with other bees, how many times in what parts of the nest and so on.
00:28:16:07 - 00:28:35:15
Joanito Liberti
So we generate a huge amount of data and then we can we can analyze it in different ways. And one way of done these is to look at how the bees interacted with their heads and just count the amount of times they interacted and compared bees that had the gut microbiota with bees that didn't have the gut microbiota.
00:28:35:17 - 00:28:38:10
Abigail Acton
What makes the interaction with the head particularly important?
00:28:38:12 - 00:29:00:13
Joanito Liberti
This is because bees, as I said, are highly social organisms, and in these head to head interactions they do two or three different things where they can clean each other, they can transfer information to them. And so they, they infinite with each other or through the fluxes, they usually exchange fluids. So nectar, which is eventually stored as honey.
00:29:00:15 - 00:29:07:20
Joanito Liberti
We believe that the gut microbiota has an effect on these transfer of nutrients and information within the hive.
00:29:07:21 - 00:29:15:10
Abigail Acton
And tonight it's a new word. So the bird antenna, you can actually make a verb. Antony That's fascinating. Yeah. So tell me, what did you find?
00:29:15:12 - 00:29:47:16
Joanito Liberti
So the most fascinating result that we had from this research is that indeed the gut microbiota promotes the social behavior of the bees. We found that there was about 20% more social interactions. The other heads when bees hosted the gut microbiome compared to jump bees. And not only that, we found that even for me, more interestingly, is that these interactions became more structured, meaning that some that be studied to interact much more often with specific nest mates.
00:29:47:16 - 00:30:02:24
Joanito Liberti
So we do other specific bees and not so much with the rest of the group, whereas in the control that was germ free, these interactions were much more equal in the sense that each be interacted more or less the same amount of times with the other bees. But overall they had less.
00:30:02:24 - 00:30:05:17
Abigail Acton
Interaction, so less interaction and less discriminate.
00:30:05:19 - 00:30:06:10
Joanito Liberti
Yes.
00:30:06:12 - 00:30:08:16
Abigail Acton
And so then potentially less efficient.
00:30:08:18 - 00:30:20:23
Joanito Liberti
This is what we believe would be the case, because as I said, what they do a lot of fundamental behaviors head to head. And so we believe that the the flow of nutrients and information may be affected in the home.
00:30:21:00 - 00:30:33:07
Abigail Acton
So what I'm wondering then is beyond the yielding of really insightful data with regards to behavior and got brain axis, what what's the practical implication on this of this?
00:30:33:07 - 00:31:00:04
Joanito Liberti
RATHER Well, of course we are interested from an evolutionary perspective, as I said before, and I hope that this kind of research will prompt similar investigation in other social organisms to see whether the same kind of social behaviors are affected on one hand, and what are the molecular mechanisms that regulate these interactions between the gut microbiota and the brain are conserved or not, or they use different different proximate mechanisms.
00:31:00:06 - 00:31:25:21
Joanito Liberti
Eventually, I hope that we in the future will be able to design treatments. For example, probiotics or probiotics that could improve the social behavior of these animals that are very important to us and the collective performance. So that's they will become even better at collecting, extracting and storing the resources that they collect. Free environments.
00:31:25:23 - 00:31:50:19
Abigail Acton
Hallel I'd like to bring you in here because this seems quite interesting here. So if you were to come up with a way of using artificial intelligence to analyze the data present, for example, in the feces to pick up whether there was a lack of of bacterial diversity or, for example, if there were certain bacteria missing that would make the bees more efficient in their communication processes, that could be a real positive for beer.
00:31:50:19 - 00:31:52:10
Abigail Acton
What do you think? Is it stretching it?
00:31:52:12 - 00:32:03:11
Hallel Schreier
Well, an interesting prospect, I would say. It's, I'll need to think about it a bit more if it's really feasible or not.
00:32:03:13 - 00:32:20:04
Abigail Acton
But you guys are in touch with each other. But yeah, I mean, if it's really having an impact, if it does have an impact, as it seems to indicate on their ability to function effectively and efficiently, then that's something perhaps that that artificial intelligence could be used to look at. Maybe. Does anyone have any questions for Juanito? Because it's a really fascinating subject.
00:32:20:05 - 00:32:21:06
Abigail Acton
Yeah, Stuart.
00:32:21:08 - 00:32:46:20
Stuart Campbell
I have a question, actually. Yeah. So and you sort of alluded to this towards the end, but honeybees are obviously a domesticated species or at least significantly partially domesticated species. Have you compared the gut microbiomes of wild species like things like bumblebees, for example, to see whether they host a greater diversity of bacteria in their guts?
00:32:46:22 - 00:33:15:22
Joanito Liberti
Not personally, but there is a lot of work going on on this. There's a bumblebee. Gut microbiota is well-characterized. There's new research on stingless bees. And what is very interesting is that they all seem to host the same set of microbial species, but then the strains that these bacteria are and that there are distinct between the different bee genera. And so this seems to have been tied co-evolution between the gut microbiota and these different host bees.
00:33:16:02 - 00:33:32:05
Abigail Acton
Perhaps the point here is, is there a wider spread of bacteria in the gut of wild bees, if we can call them, you know, wild bees just generally, you know, in comparison to bees that have been honeybees that have been bred is the wrong word. But yeah, that have been so closely associated the right word. is it.
00:33:32:05 - 00:33:38:04
Abigail Acton
Thank you. Okay, bred I mean, yeah, maybe we imagine that the wild bees are more diverse or what do you think?
00:33:38:08 - 00:34:05:07
Joanito Liberti
Actually, it seems to be the other way around. And there is research done in my in my research group where we're looking at strain level diversity, and we find that the honeybee hosts a much larger diversity than, for example, Apis cerana or other bee species. And we we don't know exactly why is that? It could be because of the species area relationship.
00:34:05:08 - 00:34:33:01
Joanito Liberti
So there's more space for bacterial evolution within within a honeybee because the populations are larger and so on, and then compare, for example, with the bumble Bee or these other Asian honey bees, where it could be because of the management, because of the beekeeping industry, you know, are mixing hives from different geographical areas and so on. And that drives.
00:34:33:03 - 00:34:33:15
Abigail Acton
Diversity.
00:34:33:15 - 00:34:39:09
Joanito Liberti
More bacterial diversity. But we currently don't know. And it's a very fascinating question. Can I ask a follow up question?
00:34:39:10 - 00:34:41:01
Abigail Acton
Please do. Please do.
00:34:41:03 - 00:35:06:00
Stuart Campbell
Have you looked at any solitary bees? Because of course, like social bees are a relatively minor component of the 20,000 species of bee. I'm curious, like solitary bees might face different challenges and might have different gut microbiota just based on their their life history. So I am not completely sure. I mean, there are studies out there looking at solitary bees.
00:35:06:02 - 00:35:30:07
Joanito Liberti
I know recently, for example, someone has looked at the vulture bee to look at whether, for example, you know, how diet influences also the composition of this gut microbiome. If you have a shift in diet, you know, to eat meat compared to the pollen, either as diet, how does that affect the microbiome? And there seems to be some some different is it still in its early stage?
00:35:30:13 - 00:35:37:10
Joanito Liberti
There is much more work to do. Characterize the gut microbiota of other species that needs to be done.
00:35:37:12 - 00:35:53:22
Abigail Acton
Well, I think that's just brilliant and I think we'll leave it there. But I like the I like leaving this podcast, the note that there's more work to be done. I like more questions raised than answered each time. I think that's wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. This has been a really, really interesting episode, Right?
00:35:54:03 - 00:35:56:14
ALL
Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.
00:35:56:16 - 00:35:58:24
ALL
Thanks very much for having us. Thank you.
00:35:59:01 - 00:36:19:21
Abigail Acton
My great pleasure. My great pleasure. I wish you good luck, all of you, with the continuation of the work that you're doing. are you interested in what other EU funded projects are doing to uncover the secret lives of bees and other pollinators? The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by the Horizon 2020 program that are working in this area.
00:36:19:23 - 00:36:39:22
Abigail Acton
The website has articles and interviews that explore the results. Research being conducted in a very broad range of domain from zoonosis to zebrafish. There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look and see what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick.
00:36:39:24 - 00:36:52:00
Abigail Acton
We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line editorial at Cordis dot Europa dot EU. Until next time.
Información e ideas
Las abejas, que garantizan la polinización de más del 80 % de las especies de plantas silvestres y de cultivo de Europa, están amenazadas por el cambio climático, las plagas, los fertilizantes químicos y la pérdida de hábitat. Una de cada diez especies de abejas y mariposas de Europa están en peligro de extinción y un tercio de ellas están en declive. Por lo tanto, se necesita una mejor comprensión de la forma en que las abejas interactúan con su entorno y, en este sentido, los tres invitados de este episodio están en una posición ideal para aportar cierta información al respecto. ¿Podemos poner nuestros conocimientos tecnológicos al servicio de su rescate y emplear la inteligencia artificial para hacer más resilientes las colmenas? La palabra «microbioma» ha permeado la vida cotidiana: el concepto de diversidad intestinal y salud intestinal se emplea con asiduidad para vender complementos alimenticios y hacernos comer chucrut. Pero ¿qué pasa en el caso de las abejas? ¿Su microbioma afecta a su cerebro y a la forma en que procesan su entorno? ¿Y qué hay de la «perspectiva» de las plantas? ¿Cómo han evolucionado para invitar a algunos insectos y disuadir a otros? ¿Influyen los insectos masticadores en la evolución de las flores y los mensajes que envían a los polinizadores? Hallel Schreier es cofundador y director de investigación de BeeWise, la empresa detrás de BeeHome. Hallel aborda la intersección entre el «software», la inteligencia artificial, el «hardware» y la biología para ayudar a llevar las colmenas al siglo XXI. Stuart Campbell dirige un laboratorio de investigación en la Universidad de Sheffield, en el área de la ecología química y la evolución de las interacciones insecto-planta, y coordinó el proyecto DEFPOLL. Joanito Liberti, ecólogo molecular evolutivo de la Universidad de Lausana, está interesado en comprender cómo la selección natural conforma las interacciones sociales. Joanito dirigió el proyecto BRAIN, en el que se examinó el eje cerebro-intestino en las abejas.
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Si quiere compartir con nosotros su opinión, ¡estaremos encantados! Puede enviarnos cualquier comentario, pregunta o sugerencia (pero esperamos que nunca una queja) a la dirección de correo electrónico habitual: editorial@cordis.europa.eu.
Palabras clave
CORDIScovery, CORDIS, BeeHome, DEFPOLL, BRAIN, abejas, Día Mundial de las Abejas, abeja melífera, colmena, colmenas, insectos polinizadores, microbioma