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The Darwin cure for apiculture? Natural selection and managed honeybee health

Recent major losses of managed honeybee, Apis mellifera, colonies at a global scale have resulted in a multitude of research efforts to identify the underlying mechanisms. Numerous factors acting singly and/or in combination have been identified, ranging from pathogens, over nutrition to pesticides....

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Neumann, Peter, Blacquière, Tjeerd
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5322407/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28250807
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eva.12448
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author Neumann, Peter
Blacquière, Tjeerd
author_facet Neumann, Peter
Blacquière, Tjeerd
author_sort Neumann, Peter
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description Recent major losses of managed honeybee, Apis mellifera, colonies at a global scale have resulted in a multitude of research efforts to identify the underlying mechanisms. Numerous factors acting singly and/or in combination have been identified, ranging from pathogens, over nutrition to pesticides. However, the role of apiculture in limiting natural selection has largely been ignored. This is unfortunate, because honeybees are more exposed to environmental stressors compared to other livestock and management can severely compromise bee health. Here, we briefly review apicultural factors that influence bee health and focus on those most likely interfering with natural selection, which offers a broad range of evolutionary applications for field practice. Despite intense breeding over centuries, natural selection appears to be much more relevant for the health of managed A. mellifera colonies than previously thought. We conclude that sustainable solutions for the apicultural sector can only be achieved by taking advantage of natural selection and not by attempting to limit it.
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spelling pubmed-53224072017-03-01 The Darwin cure for apiculture? Natural selection and managed honeybee health Neumann, Peter Blacquière, Tjeerd Evol Appl Perspectives Recent major losses of managed honeybee, Apis mellifera, colonies at a global scale have resulted in a multitude of research efforts to identify the underlying mechanisms. Numerous factors acting singly and/or in combination have been identified, ranging from pathogens, over nutrition to pesticides. However, the role of apiculture in limiting natural selection has largely been ignored. This is unfortunate, because honeybees are more exposed to environmental stressors compared to other livestock and management can severely compromise bee health. Here, we briefly review apicultural factors that influence bee health and focus on those most likely interfering with natural selection, which offers a broad range of evolutionary applications for field practice. Despite intense breeding over centuries, natural selection appears to be much more relevant for the health of managed A. mellifera colonies than previously thought. We conclude that sustainable solutions for the apicultural sector can only be achieved by taking advantage of natural selection and not by attempting to limit it. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016-12-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5322407/ /pubmed/28250807 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eva.12448 Text en © 2016 The Authors. Evolutionary Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Perspectives
Neumann, Peter
Blacquière, Tjeerd
The Darwin cure for apiculture? Natural selection and managed honeybee health
title The Darwin cure for apiculture? Natural selection and managed honeybee health
title_full The Darwin cure for apiculture? Natural selection and managed honeybee health
title_fullStr The Darwin cure for apiculture? Natural selection and managed honeybee health
title_full_unstemmed The Darwin cure for apiculture? Natural selection and managed honeybee health
title_short The Darwin cure for apiculture? Natural selection and managed honeybee health
title_sort darwin cure for apiculture? natural selection and managed honeybee health
topic Perspectives
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5322407/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28250807
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eva.12448
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