ERC Starting Grant · 2016
Evolution of the honey bee gut microbiome through bacterial diversification
Animals harbor specialized bacterial communities in their guts, typically referred to as gut microbiomes. Despite the importance of gut microbiomes for host health, surprisingly little is known about their evolution. There is evidence that the complexity of the mammalian gut microbiome has emerged through the diversification of a few founder lineages. However, how lineages have diversified into discrete species and which underlying mechanisms maintain the diversity in the gut remains elusive. The current project will address these questions by studying the gut microbiome of honey bees. We have recently found that the eight dominant bacterial lineages in the honey bee gut have substantially…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.