Honey bees are important pollinators that harbor a relatively simple gut microbiota with striking parallels to the mammalian system; this makes them relevant models to study gut microbial functions and their impact on host health. In this study, Kešnerová et al. used untargeted metabolomics to characterize the metabolic changes induced by the gut microbiota and to identify the contributions of the major community members. They found that the gut microbiota digests recalcitrant substrates derived from the pollen-based diet of bees. The false-colored image shows a pollen grain surrounded by bacteria from the honey bee gut; to obtain this, the rectum of an adult worker bee was deep-frozen, cryo-fractured and scanned with an electron microscope.

Image Credit: Antonio Mucciolo, University of Lausanne