Recently, a significant progress on the bumblebee gut community enterotypes has been made by a group of scientists including Dr. Li Jilian from Institute of Apicultural Research (IAR) of CAAS, Dr. Zhang Zhigang from State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Nancy Moran from Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas.

The results showed that two fixed set of enterotypes occurred in the bumblebees gut microbes. One of them is composed by Gilliamella and Snodgrassella flora that has existed in honeybees, the other is composed by the environment flora as well as some conditional pathogenic bacteria, e.g. Hafnia and Serratia.

This is the very first discovery of the existence of specific enterotypes of gut microbes in the pollination insects after which were found in humans and chimpanzees. This study provides a new perspective for the future research of biology of gut microbes in pollinators. The research result was available online on August 3rd, 2015 on the Current Biology "(5- Year Impact Factor: 10.134).

More details are available on the link bellow: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215007253