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"As in many animals, honey bees rely on their gut microbial community for a variety of functions, including food processing (25, 26), regulation of immune system (33, 34), and defense against pathogens (17, 27). Perturbations of this system have the potential to lead to negative consequences for host fitness. "

There have been many unexpected effects from the human introduction of long lived synthetic compounds into the environment. E.g. we had to learn the hard way about bioaccumulation and hormonal disruption. Now we are starting to see more and more cases [e.g. 1] where damage to microbiomes may be causing harm and we may need to make such effects part of safety screening and environmental monitoring. Could microbiome effects explain the crash in many insect populations around the world [2-4]?

1 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1365-2656.12...

2 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/17/where-ha... 3 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... 4 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Theo_Zeegers/publicatio...