Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Evolutionary Ecology

Publication Date

2026

Keywords

immune priming, bumble bee, IAPV, infection dynamics, applied ecoimmunology, emerging infectious diseases

Abstract

Ongoing global change presents novel challenges to species persistence, including heightened emerging infectious disease (EID) exposure. While invertebrates lack vertebrate acquired immunity, many species exhibit “immune priming” with enhanced protection to repeated pathogen exposures. This phenomenon could be critical for species of conservation concern, such as for wild bumble bees, where EID risk is amplified through contact with managed bee pollinators. We investigate the potential for immune priming against the honey bee-derived Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) in Bombus impatiens bumble bees. We test the hypothesis that prior pathogen-associated exposure affords greater resistance and tolerance upon secondary pathogen exposure, due to the adaptive benefits of immune plasticity. However, we find no evidence from viral infection levels or survival for either specific or general priming from low dose or inactivated virus, or synthetic viral RNA constructs. Infection levels, however, show patterns indicative of immune senescence and an intriguing bimodal distribution that warrants further investigation. Our results indicate that antiviral immune priming in bumble bees may be limited in capacity against viral spillover and utility for strategic conservation interventions. They also contribute to our growing understanding that beneficial immune priming is not a universal phenomenon across or even within invertebrate host taxa.

Funding Source

We would like to thank Dr. Tom Nielsen and Dr. Kathy Bohn for their funding support to both A.C.C. and B.M.S. Further support came from a Mockford-Thompson Fellowship awarded by Phi Sigma Biological Honors Society for a summer fellowship, the Society for the Study of Evolution R.C. Lewontin Graduate Research Excellence Award and R.D. Weigel Award to A.C.C., the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Threatened and Endangered Species Template award numbers F22AP02271 and F25AP01499 to B.M.S. This article was published Open Access thanks to a transformative agreement between Milner Library and Springer Nature.

Comments

First published in Evolutionary Ecology (2026): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-026-10379-2. Supplementary information available on the publisher's website.

DOI

10.1007/s10682-026-10379-2

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