Effect of aging and Varroa parasitism on the paracellular and transcellular permeability of the honeybee blood-brain barrier.

Overview

Authors: Tyler Quigley¹, Gro Amdam^1,2

ORCID iDs: Tyler Quigley

School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States of America
Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Aas, Norway

Institutions: Arizona State University (United States); Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway)

Journal: PloS one, volume 21, issue 3, article e0343142

Dates: received 4 October 2024; accepted 2 February 2026; published online 27 March 2026

Type: Research article · Language: English

License: CC BY

Identifiers: DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0343142 · PMID 41894470 · PMCID PMC13028543 · OpenAlex W7141519560

Open access: gold, a free copy (OpenAlex)

Status: data only (how the code is found and verified)

Categories: other (organism)

Methods: Spectral & time-frequency, Statistics

MeSH: Aging*, Blood-Brain Barrier*, Varroidae*, Animals, Bees, Hemolymph, Permeability (* major topic)

Topic: Insect and Pesticide Research (Insect Science, Agricultural and Biological Sciences), according to OpenAlex

Funding: Norges Forskningsråd (335244)

Citations: not cited yet (Europe PMC); 55 references in the paper

Abstract

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) provide crucial pollination services to agricultural systems globally, however, their healthspan in these contexts is constantly at risk. Agricultural environments impose a variety of sublethal stressors onto honeybees, including parasites, pathogens, pesticides, and poor nutrition. Synergies between age, age-associated tasks, and these stressors are believed to underlie colony failure trends of the past decade. Identifying the mechanisms by which age and stressors impact honeybee physiology is an important priority in protecting honeybee and other pollinator populations. An underexplored physiological structure in honeybees is the blood-brain barrier, a protective layer of cells that surrounds the brain. Here, we assess key dimensions of blood-brain barrier function; paracellular and transcellular permeability to molecules in the hemolymph. We measured these modes of permeability across worker groups that differ in age and foraging experience, as well as in bees exposed to varying levels of infestation by the parasitic mite Varroa destructor during development. Our results demonstrate that the paracellular permeability of the honeybee blood-brain barrier is stable across these age groups and upon Varroa exposure. In contrast, we found that transcellular permeability is increased in honeybees exposed to a high Varroa load. Together, these results demonstrate that age-related variation and parasitic stress differentially impact a primary protective structure of the honeybee central nervous system, which may lead to targeted interventions for protecting honeybee healthspan. The assay developed here may be easily applied to different aging- and stress-related contexts, further enabling studies focused on understanding maintenance and decline of the honeybee blood-brain barrier.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

The paper links to its data and to no code of its authors: see the Data section.

Tracing map

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Data

Datasets cited

figshare:30888278, at figshare; found in “Data Availability”

Data Availability

The data underlying the results presented in the study are available from Figshare, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.30888278.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Versions

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Version 1, 30 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 2 authors, 7 MeSH terms, 1 funder, 51 references.

Cite

This paper

Quigley, T., & Amdam, G. (2026). Effect of aging and Varroa parasitism on the paracellular and transcellular permeability of the honeybee blood-brain barrier. PloS one, 21(3), e0343142. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0343142

BibTeX

@article{quigley2026effect, author = {Quigley, Tyler and Amdam, Gro}, title = {{Effect of aging and Varroa parasitism on the paracellular and transcellular permeability of the honeybee blood-brain barrier}}, journal = {PloS one}, year = {2026}, month = mar, volume = {21}, number = {3}, pages = {e0343142}, publisher = {PLOS}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0343142}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0343142}, pmid = {41894470}, pmcid = {PMC13028543} }

RIS

TY - JOUR AU - Quigley, Tyler AU - Amdam, Gro TI - Effect of aging and Varroa parasitism on the paracellular and transcellular permeability of the honeybee blood-brain barrier T2 - PloS one J2 - PLoS One PY - 2026 DA - 2026/03/27 VL - 21 IS - 3 SP - e0343142 SN - 1932-6203 PB - PLOS DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0343142 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0343142 LA - en ER -

CSL-JSON

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