Fungi are underappreciated components of microbial communities and can contribute to community assembly dynamics through microbe-microbe and host-microbe interactions. Specifically, Aspergillus species are ubiquitous environmental fungi that can play significant roles in plant, bee, and soil health. These species also unify the GEMS systems and can be potentially trafficked between them. However, little is known about the phenotypic and genetic diversity of Aspergillus strains in any of the GEMS systems. For example, previously, the Berenbaum and Dolezal labs have shown that a specific Aspergillus flavus strain, isolated from bee bread, can detoxify pesticides, providing a benefit to the bee. However, a different isolate of Aspergillus flavus, cultivated from a dead honey bee by the Newton lab, is a potent pathogen of bee brood and is inhibited by the B. apis antifungal metabolite. These disparate results lead to questions such as: What is the genetic diversity of Aspergillus strains across these environments? How does this diversity relate to the ability of these organisms to interact with resident microbes and the bee colony? Is there environmental filtering that occurs as the bees traffic in these environmental microbes from gathered pollen? What is the spillover effect on bee health? May Berenbaum, Adam Dolezal, and Irene Newton focus on the bee system as preliminary data from the group suggests Aspergillus may play significant roles in the health of the bee colony. However, because the colony is an open system, the project and framework easily extend to other GEMS systems, with the potential for this project to expand to the soil, and plant interactions in subsequent years.