Leveraging eDNA and eRNA to better understand pathogen prevalence on floral resources

The earth remains firmly entrenched in the sixth mass extinction crisis, with biodiversity losses cutting across all branches of the Tree of Life. Pollinators, particularly, have suffered severe losses due to numerous. often compounding stressors, including climate change, habitat loss and degradation, pesticide pollution, and emerging infectious diseases. Infectious diseases have been of considerable concern, as they are hypothesized to drive staggering declines of some native bee species. As such, non-lethal, rapid, accurate, and sensitive methods for native bee biomonitoring and pathogen detection are imperative. Environmental Nucleic Acids (eNA) are an emerging tool that can be leveraged to address this issue. Specifically, eDNA approaches have been ascendant in rapidly assessing pollinator communities. More recently, environmental (e)RNA has risen to the fore as a promising means of vastly expanding information we can glean from environmental samples. Here we leverage innovations using wild collected prairie flowers to assess native bee biodiversity and pollinator disease prevalence. Specifically, we used eDNA metabarcoding to document native bee pollinators on native midwestern prairie floral resources. We also used targeted eRNA assays to test for common bee pathogens on those same floral resources. We documented 18 native bee species on floral resources. Additionally, we detected common bee pathogens, supporting evidence that floral resources could serve as a source of pathogen transmission. Ultimately, our results show that combining eDNA and eRNA can expand the information and knowledge of how pollinators and their pathogens may be interacting in the environment, and, potentially, develop strategies to mitigate pollinator losses.