title: Microbial symbionts of honeybees: a promising tool to improve honeybee health.
abstract: Among pollinators, honeybees are the most important ones and exert the essential key ecosystem service of pollination for many crops, fruit and wild plants. Indeed, several crops are strictly dependent on honeybee pollination. Since few decades, honeybees are facing large-scale losses worldwide, the causes of which are found in the interaction of several biotic and abiotic factors, such as the use of pesticides, the habitat loss, the spread of pathogens and parasites and the occurrence of climate changes. Insect symbionts are emerging as a potential tool to protect beneficial insects, ameliorating the innate immune homeostasis and contributing to the general insect wellbeing. A review about the microbial symbionts associated to honeybees is here presented. The importance of the honeybee microbial commensals for the maintenance and improvement of honeybee health is discussed. Several stressors like infestations of Varroa mites and the use of pesticides can contribute to the occurrence of dysbiosis phenomena, resulting in a perturbation of the microbiocenosis established in the honeybee body.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze per gli Alimenti, la Nutrizione e l'Ambiente (DeFENS), Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy. Electronic address: elena.crotti@unimi.it.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Crotti
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sansonno
authors.forename: Erica M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Prosdocimi
authors.forename: Violetta
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Vacchini
authors.forename: Chadlia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hamdi
authors.forename: Ameur
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cherif
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gonella
authors.forename: Massimo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Marzorati
authors.forename: Annalisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Balloi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000276:immunology* / Q000382:microbiology*; D007113:Immunity, Innate; D059013:Microbial Consortia / Q000502:physiology*; D013559:Symbiosis / Q000502:physiology*