The ability of high- and low-grooming lines of honey bees to remove the parasitic mite Varroa destructor is affected by environmental conditions

The mite Varroa jacobsoni is a brood parasite of the Asian hive bee, Apis cerana. The recent switch in host from A. cerana to the western honeybee, Apis mellifera, offers an exceptional opportunity for studying preadaptation and host-parasite relations. The fact that this host shift appears to have happened on at least two separate occasions, with differing outcomes, must be unique. At another level, the rapacious spread of this mite throughout the world is testimony to the ineffectiveness of international quarantine laws. Show more

Over the last decade, there has been a major shift in the study of adaptive patterns and processes towards including the role of host-parasite interactions, informed by concepts from evolutionary ecology. As a consequence, a number of major questions have emerged. For example, how genetics affects host-parasite interactions, whether parasitism selects for offspring diversification, whether parasite virulence is an adaptive trait, and what constrains the use of the host's immune defences. Using bumblebees, Bombus spp, and their parasites as a model system, answers to some of these questions have been found, while at the same time the complexity of the interaction has led expectations away from simple theoretical models. In addition, the results have also led to the unexpected discovery of novel phenomena concerning, for instance, female mating strategies. Show more