Review on Honeybee as a Simple Model Animal for Microbiome Research Work

Abstract

Muhammad Fahad Raza*, Bilal Atta, Muhammad Ammar Raza and Muhammad Asad

Microbiome research of the gut is an emerging discipline that seeks to understand better the functional and ecological dynamics of microbiota. The gut microbiota of honeybees is a unique community to investigate, as honeybees are ecologically essential pollinators of several crops grown for human consumption and they produce valuable products like royal jelly, wax and honey. Most importantly, the gut environment of Apis mellifera has unique characteristics that make it an excellent model system. This review discusses the honeybee gut microbiota significance, its effect on behavior and endocrine signalling, neurological effect of gut microbiota, perturbation of native microbiota, and structural differences of gut microbiota in summer and winter. This review also outlined the microbiome research on the traditional biomedical model’s honeybee, zebrafish, Drosophila melanogaster, and Caenorhabditis elegans command outstanding research resources tools are addressed. This review highlights the honeybee as a promising model insect to better understand honeybee gut microbiota, facilitating microbiome research and bee microbiota in general, and supporting future prospective.