Reader Comments
Post a new comment on this article
Post Your Discussion Comment
Please follow our guidelines for comments and review our competing interests policy. Comments that do not conform to our guidelines will be promptly removed and the user account disabled. The following must be avoided:
- Remarks that could be interpreted as allegations of misconduct
- Unsupported assertions or statements
- Inflammatory or insulting language
Thank You!
Thank you for taking the time to flag this posting; we review flagged postings on a regular basis.
closeDiscussion Point Clarification
Posted by mflenniken on 01 Jul 2011 at 17:10 GMT
The discussion paper of our paper (Runckel C, Flenniken ML et al PLoS One 2011) reads, "Another virus, invertebrate iridescent virus-6, claimed to be associated with CCD and prevalent (75%) in healthy colonies but not supported in subsequent analysis [84], [85], was never detected by the APM (n = 431), end-point PCR (n = 197), or in any of the 20 samples that were deep sequenced [86]."
It was my understanding from the 2010 PLoS One article by Bromenshenk JJ, Henderson CB, Wick CH, Stanford MF, Zulich AW, et al. (2010) Iridovirus and Microsporidian Linked to Honey Bee Colony Decline. Plos One 5: e13181, specifically Table I and the text in their discussion section [“IIV appeared with 100 percent frequency and at higher peptide counts in failing and collapsed colonies. IIV also occurred in nearly 75 percent of strong colonies, although invariably at lower concentrations.indicates that the incidence of IIV and Nosema 1 were strongly associated with group scores on the discriminant functions. “] that “strong” colonies even within an operation experiencing CCD to be the “healthy control” samples as an out-group for comparison to “CCD-affected” and “failing” colonies (since often not all the hives within an operation undergo collapse disorder).
In retrospect, I should have used the word “strong” or "the stronger colonies in a CCD-affected operation" instead of the word “healthy” in our discussion and therefore wanted to clarify this point for the research community.
Michelle Flenniken