Projects

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  Eco-evo feedbacks: How does rhizobium evolution affect pollination ecology?

  Core Project

  Researchers Adam Dolezal, Alex Harmon-Threatt, and others, are studying the interactions between clover, honey bees, and their microbial symbionts, and how they are impacted by symbiosis breakdown.

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  Effects of diet and social context on honey bee queen microbiome and its mobilome

  Core Project

  Researchers study how stressors on honey bees affect mobile genetic elements and their bacterial hosts using queen monitoring cages and metagenomic sequencing techniques.

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  Fungal contributions to GEMS systems

  Core Project

  May Berenbaum and Adam Dolezal study the role of Aspergillus in the health of the honey bee colony, with the goal of extending this to understand the role of Aspergillus species in other GEMS systems.

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  GEMS Education Curriculum Development and Professional Learning

  Core Project

  The GEMS education and outreach team studies the impact of their efforts through various research projects, which occur during professional development experiences and in teachers’ classrooms.

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  Influence of the mobilome on the honey bee microbiome via longitudinal metagenomics and reverse ecology

  Core Project

  Researchers study how ecological and evolutionary factors shape the honey bee gut microbiome, focusing on mobile gene interactions through a longitudinal analysis of apiaries.

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  Understanding the nexus of nutrition, the microbiome, and xenobiotics susceptibility in the honey bee

  Core Project

  Adam Dolezal at UIUC and Irene Newton at IU are studying how nutrition, viral infection, and a beneficial bacterium impact honey bee health.

Publications

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  Payne et al., 2025

  Payne, A.N., Prayugo, V., & Dolezal, A. G. (2025). A honey bee-associated virus remains infectious and quantifiable in postmortem hosts. Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, 209, 108258.

  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jip.2024.108258
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  Robinson et al., 2025

  Robinson, C. R. P., Dolezal, A. G., Liachko, I., & Newton, I. L. G. (2025). Mobile genetic elements exhibit associated patterns of host range variation and sequence diversity within the gut microbiome of the European honey bee. bioRxiv.

  https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.31.635958
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  Boehm Vock et al., 2024

  Boehm Vock, L. F., Mossman, L. M., Rapti, Z., Dolezal, A. G., & Clifton, S. M. (2024). Spatiotemporal, environmental, and behavioral predictors of Varroa mite intensity in managed honey bee apiaries. bioRxiv.

  https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.23.614412
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  Robinson et al., 2024

  Robinson, C. R. P., Dolezal, A. G., & Newton, I. L. G. (2024). Host species and geography impact bee-associated RNA virus communities with evidence for isolation by distance in viral populations. ISME Communications, 4(1), 1-14.

  https://doi.org/10.1093/ismeco/ycad003
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  St. Clair et al., 2024

  St. Clair, A. L., Dwyer, B., Shapiro, M., & Dolezal, A. G. (2024). Adult honey bee queens consume pollen and nectar. bioRxiv.

  https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.12.04.626851