Svjetlana Kruse
Rowan University, NJ·Biology·Early-career
Microbes living in an animal's gut can shape its development, health and even its behavior. Hints that altered gut communities accompany human social conditions such as autism raise the possibility that gut microbes influence social behavior, but almost all of the experimental work has used mice and fruit flies, animals that do not build large, complex societies.
- Fields
Biology
Ecology & Evolution
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
gut microbiome
honey bees
Apis mellifera
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2027
What they work on
- Test whether altering the honey bee gut microbiome changes individual learning and memory, measured with the proboscis extension reflex, a conditioning test in which bees learn to associate an odor with a sugar reward.
- Determine whether gut microbiome treatments change social behavior at the group level by constructing contact networks that map which bees interact with which nestmates.
- Identify gene expression changes associated with gut microbiome manipulation by RNA sequencing of honey bee brain and gut tissue, linking molecular profiles to the measured individual and social behaviors.
More about the research
This project moves the question into a genuinely social animal and asks how changing the gut microbiome alters both what an individual bee learns and how it interacts with its nestmates.
Why it matters
Honey bees are declining worldwide while remaining essential pollinators, and if gut microbes measurably affect bee learning and social interaction, the microbiome becomes a possible lever for improving colony health, which matters for beekeepers and the crops that depend on bee pollination. The work also provides a social-animal test case for how gut microbes influence host behavior more generally.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Michael Smith
Auburn University, AL·Ecology & Evolution
Produce the first 3-dimensional description of how Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) nests are organized as colonies grow, develop and reproduce, using a field-ready photography rig to image combs over time.
Beryl Jones
University of Kentucky, KY·Ecology & Evolution
Identify changes in gene regulatory networks (GRNs) linked to evolutionary gains and losses of social behavior across bee species that differ in sociality.
Santiago Cuesta
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Neuroscience·Early-career
Identify how psychostimulant exposure changes gut microbial composition and the gut's chemical environment, using metagenomics to profile microbial DNA and metabolomics to measure small molecules.
The school
Rowan University: 7 labs on PI Pages, $64M a year on research, 69 research doctorates a year.
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