Microbial communities in animal guts are composed of diverse, specialized bacterial
species, but little is known about how gut bacteria diversify to produce genetically and …

Most bacterial species encompass strains with vastly different gene content. Strain diversity
in microbial communities is therefore considered to be of functional importance. Yet little is …

Animals living in social communities typically harbor a characteristic gut microbiota
important for nutrition and pathogen defense. Accordingly, in the gut of the honey bee, Apis …

The honey bee, Apis mellifera, harbors a characteristic gut microbiota composed of only a
few species which seem to be specific to social bees. The maintenance of this stable and …

The structure and distribution of genomic diversity in natural microbial communities is largely
unexplored. Here, we used shotgun metagenomics to assess the diversity of the honey bee …

Introduction The functional relevance of intra-species diversity in natural microbial
communities remains largely unexplored. The guts of two closely related honey bee species …

Gilliamella apicola and Snodgrassella alvi are dominant members of the honey bee (Apis
spp.) and bumble bee (Bombus spp.) gut microbiota. We generated complete genomes of …

Interactions with microbes affect many aspects of animal biology, including immune system
development, nutrition and health. In vertebrates, the gut microbiota is dominated by a small …

Abstract Background In the honeybee Apis mellifera, the bacterial gut community is
consistently colonized by eight distinct phylotypes of bacteria. Managed bee colonies are of …

The gut microbiome plays a key role in animal health, and perturbing it can have detrimental
effects. One major source of perturbation to microbiomes, in humans and human‐associated …