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By Carolyn, February 11, 2022

We’ve been busy!

Published on January 31 – Phenomic analysis of the honey bee pathogen-web and its dynamics on colony productivity, health and social immunity behaviors found that “colonies expressing high levels of three out of four of the social immunity behaviors studied (hygienic behavior, Varroa resistance behavior and grooming-related mite damage) were associated with low levels of pathogens/parasites, including viruses, Nosema spp., and mites.” This paper was in collaboration with Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, University of Lethbridge, University of Manitoba, Université Laval, and University of British Columbia! Read this open access paper

We also just got word that “Bees in the six: Determinants of bumblebee habitat quality in urban landscapes” is now in press in Ecology and Evolution! This paper is co-authored by current and past Zayed Lab members Ida Conflitti, Mohammad Arshad Imrit, Bandele Morrison and in collaboration with Dr. Sheila R. Colla!

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By Amro, May 10, 2019

Hot off the press: PhD candidate Nadia Tsvetkov in my group collaborated with Dr. Chelsea Cook at Arizona State University to study the effects of group size on learning and memory in the honey bee. We found the group size did affect how bees responded to sugar rewards and how they learned to discriminate between sugar and salt based on odour cues.

Nadejda Tsvetkov, Chelsea N. Cook, Amro Zayed. 2019. Effects of group size on learning and memory in the honey bee Apis mellifera. Journal of Experimental Biology 2019 222: jeb193888 doi: 10.1242/jeb.193888

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By Amro, August 15, 2018

Happy to announce the publication of the genome of the yellow banded bumblebee ; an at-risk species that has substantially declined in Canada and the US. The genome will help us better understand the factors underlying the species’s decline.

Please check out the press release and the paper online.

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By Amro, July 10, 2018

Happy to report the publication of a new paper from the lab, in collaboration with Drs. Amy Toth (Iowa State) and Laura Beani (Università di Firenze). The paper was led by PhD Candidate Katie Dogantzis, and involved generating new population genomics data for paper wasps and comparing the data to honey bees and bumblebees.  We found that paper wasps and bumblebees have more in common, relative to paper wasps than honeybees, when it comes to adaptive changes in protein coding genes.

Congrats Katie!

Dogantzis, K.A., Harpur, B.A., Rodriques, A., Beani, L., Toth, A.L. and Zayed, A. (2018). Insects with similar social complexity show convergent patterns of adaptive molecular evolution. Nature Scientific Reports. 8:10388. DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-28489-5 [link]

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By Amro, July 9, 2018

Check out this new perspective by PhD student Nadia Tsvetkov on the consequences of neonicotinoid spillover on honey bees, recently published by TheScienceBreaker

https://www.thesciencebreaker.org/breaks/earth-space/the-poisoned-oasis-neonicotinoid-spillover-harms-bees-near-corn

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By Amro, June 7, 2018

It always feels good when I get to work with some of my text book heros – the accomplished scientists that you read and idolize at different stages of your academic career.  So, when Dr. May Berenbaum [National Academy Member/Department Heat of Illinois’ Entomology/National Medal of Science winner… i like to say that former President Obama got his photo taken with May] emailed me a year ago to collaborate, i said ‘yes’ immediately! (i also went around telling everyone within a 30 m radius that we were going to be working with MayB!)

The resulting analysis was just published in Insectes Sociaux. Its a fun little paper about how social bees, who have an extreme pollen- and nectar-rich diet have evolved to cope with some of the nasty chemicals that plants use against herbivorous insects

1. Johnson, R.M., Harpur, B.A., Dogantzis, K., Zayed, A., and Berenbaum, M.R. (2018). Genomic footprint of evolution of eusocilaity in bees: floral food use and CYPome “blooms”. Insectes Sociaux. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-018-0631-x [link]

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By Amro, July 4, 2017

Greetings all,
Our paper on honey bee health near corn crops was published last week in the journal Science. The study was funded by the Government of Ontario. The research team included collaborators from Laval led by Dr. Valérie Fournier, and several zayedlab undergrads that worked with Nadia on this large project.

While normally i would write a little summary, a lot of our findings have been summarized in the news, so you can read about the study at Nature News, Forbes, NPR, AAAS, Metro,LA Times, The Scientist, New Scientist, Washington Post, Radio Canada International, BBC News, The Guardian, The Star, Vice, Scientific American. Also check out the Editor’s Summary, and  Dr. Jeremy Kerr (U. Ottawa)’s Op Ed Story.

The paper can be accessed using the link below.

Tsvetkov, N., Samson-Robert, O., Sood, K., Patel, H.S., Malena, D.A., Gajiwala, P.H., Maciukiewicz, P., Fournier, V., Zayed, A. (2017). Chronic exposure to neonicotinoids reduces honeybee health near corn crops. Science. 356:1395-1397. [link]

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By Amro, December 7, 2016

Happy to report on a recent paper from the lab; Visiting PhD student Samir Kadri and YorkU PhD student Brock Harpur worked together to sequence and discover mutations in Brazilian Africanized honey bee genomes. The work was recently published as an open access article in Scientific Data. Also check out this y-file story on the research. Congrats Samir and Brock!

Samir and his ‘killer’ bees

Brock Harpur

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By Amro, November 7, 2016

Check out my Nature News and Views story on a very cool study on invasive Asian honey bees in Australia.

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By Amro, October 17, 2016

Jeff Lozier and I have a perspective out on bee conservation genomics – check it out in Conservation Genetics. Yay, my first paper with Jeff! Was a fun experience.

Amro