Gut microbiome responses of honey bee colonies to chronic glyphosate exposure under field conditions
This project investigates the effects of chronic dietary exposure to a commercial glyphosate formulation on the gut bacterial communities of 7-day-old nurse honey bees (Apis mellifera) maintained in field colonies. Colonies received 50% sucrose solution alone as a negative control, glyphosate at 10 or 100 mg/L, or dimethoate at 0.5 mg/L as a positive chemical control on experimental days 0, 7, 14, and 21. Midgut and hindgut tissues from three nurse bees were pooled per colony, with five independent colonies per treatment group, yielding 20 biological samples. Bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicon reads were generated.