looks like our own geof williams at auburn university was a contributing author. thanks for sharing jwc.

from the paper:

"Here we showed how varroa mite invasion has altered the viral community of honeybees, with several viruses showing increased prevalence or load, or both in the case of DWV and BQCV. Beyond the burden that both parasites and viruses represent for honeybee health, increased transmission potential of viruses is a serious threat to other insect pollinators. More than 20 000 species of wild bees play critical roles in agriculture and native ecosystems. Increased viral loads in honeybees in the presence of varroa may lead to undesired spillover to co-foraging insect pollinators or bee predator, the consequences of which for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning deserve more attention, as do the risks of developing new reservoirs or outbreaks of novel variants. The development of a global beekeeping industry that includes current strategies of varroa mite control or the development of mite-tolerant honeybees should include awareness of multi-host virus dynamics and strategies that mitigate the risk of viral spillover from honeybees to wild bee species and other flower visitors."

 

Good study- quite an august list of contributors.

Interesting that they analyzed viral signatures only immediately before and after varroa's spread without considering the changes in the viral landscape since:

'We analysed historical samples of adult A. mellifera collected during the early 2010s in front and behind the varroa expansion front in four independent geographical regions of the world, for the prevalence and loads of 14 viruses.'

'As expected, the presence of the varroa mite dramatically increased the prevalence and load of DWV-A, and this effect was by far the most important change in the honeybee viral community in 2010–2013.'

They do however make a few passing references to the global rise of DWV-B supplanting DWV-A worldwide:

'In recent years, the global establishment of varroa probably prompted the selection of an emerging variant of DWV, genotype B, capable of replicating within the mite, which is swiftly replacing the previously dominant variant, DWV genotype A.'

Also interesting to compare the relative prevalence of BQCV in the historical samples versus similar results from one of the same populations just published by Dr. Oddie which observes that this virus is not mite-vectored:

Virus infections in honeybee colonies naturally surviving ectoparasitic mite vectors

Western honeybee populations, Apis mellifera, in Europe have been known to survive infestations of the ectoparasitic mite, Varroa destructor, by means of natural selection. Proposed mechanisms in literature have been focused on the management of this ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov