Comments (0)

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!

Comments (0)

By Amro, December 6, 2021

Very happy to share this new paper from the lab on the evolutionary origin and adaptive radiation of the honey bee Apis mellifera.

Katie Dogantzis (PhD student in the lab) led this research with the help of several other current and former Zayed lab members, including Tanushree Tiwari (PhD student) and Ida Conflitti and Alivia Dey (Current and former Research Associates, respectively). The study also included collaboration with a large team of researchers from the US, Europe, Africa and Asia.

You can read the open access paper here. [Press release, NewScientist Story]

Congrats Katie!

Comments (0)

By Amro, July 9, 2021

Check out this new open access article from the lab on the conservation genomics of the yellow banded bumblebee. It is a fun collaboration with Dr. Sheila Colla at YorkU, and was led by Dr. Nadia Tsvetkov (a recent graduate from the lab).  It is really tricky to understand why bumblebees are declining; we have some general ideas, but to be able to go to the field and diagnose why a specific population is not doing well is not trivial at all. In this paper, we tried to use emerging genomic tools for bumblebees to play ‘detective’. We asked if looking at patterns of gene expression in the actual bees can give us clues as to the type of stressors they experience in the field.  Check out the article here, and the press release from YorkU here!

Comments (0)

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

Comments (0)

By Amro, February 20, 2019

The Zayed lab is starting 2019 with a bang – 5 new papers out

Brock Harpur (former PhD student – now Assistant Prof at Prude) led a team of researchers to identify bits of DNA in the bee genome that affecting social immunity – a really cool experiment that just got published in Genome Biology and Evolution. – check out the press release below for more info

Harpur, B.A., Guarna, M.M., Huxter, E., Higo, H. Moon, K-M., Hoover, S.E., Ibrahim, A., Melathopoulos, A.P., Desai, S., Currie, R.W., Pernal, S.F., Foster, L.J., Zayed, A. (2019). Integrative genomics reveals the genetics and evolution of the honey bee’s social immune system. Genome Biology and Evolution. evz018, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evz018 [link; press release]

Then, there was this lovely (if i am say so myself) review on honey bee population and quantitative genomics by Katie D (PhD Candidate) in Current Opinion in Insect Science.

Dogantzis, K.A., and Zayed, A. (2019) Recent advances in population and quantitive genomics of honey bees. Current Opinion in Insect Science. 31:93-98. [Invited review; link]

Then three papers with international collaborator. One with Dr. Karen Kapehim at Utah State which involved generating a new genome for the Alkali bee

Kapheim, K.M., Pan, H., Li, C., Blatti III, C., Harpur, B.A., Ioannidis, P., Jones, B.M., Kent, C.F., Ruzzante, L., Sloofman, L., Stolle, E., Waterhouse, R.M., Zayed, A., Zhang, G., Wcislo, W.T. (2019). Draft genome assembly and population genetics of an agricultural pollinator, the solitary alkali bee (Halictidae: Nomia melanderi). G3: Gene, Genomes, Genetics. doi:10.1534/g3.118.200865

Another with Drs. Nadine Chapman and Ben Oldroyd on the genetics of bees from Kangaroo Island.

Chapman, N.C., Sheng, J., Lim, J., Malfroy, S.F., Harpur, B.A., Zayed, A., Allsopp, M.H., Rinderer, T.E., Roberts, J.M.K, Remnant, E.J., Oldroyd, B.P. (2019). Genetic origins of honeybees (Apis mellifera) on Kangaroo Island and Norfolk Island (Australia) and Eua, Tongatapu and Vava’u islands, Kingdom of Tonga. Apidologie. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-018-0615-x

and yet another paper the Sydney bee crew; this time led by Dr. Nick Smith who spent a few month here as a visiting PhD fellow. Its an interesting look on balancing selection on cape bee genomes.

Smith, N.M.A. Wade, C., Allsopp, M.H., Harpur, B.A., Zayed, A., Rose, S.A., Engelstädter, J., Chapman, N.C., Yagound, B., Oldryod, B.P. (2019) Strikingly high levels of heterozygosity despite 20 years of inbreeding in a clonal honey bee. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 32:144-152.

This is shaping up to be a very productive year!

best,

Amro

Comments (0)

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.

Comments (0)

By Amro, August 15, 2018

Nadia recently published a new assay for studying learning and memory in honey bees.

Here is a link to the paper, and the press release 

Comments (0)

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]

Comments (0)

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

Comments (0)

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]