Title:  A multifactorial approach to honeybees health: from multiple causes to consequences and possible actions

Supervisor: Francesco Nazzi

Honeybee plays a fundamental role in crop production and biodiversity maintenance. During the last decades, widespread losses of honey bee colonies were reported in the northern hemisphere causing great concern for the beekeeping and ecological implications.

It has been shown that losses have a multifactorial origin, with pathogen and parasites playing a key important role but environmental conditions and the availability of nutrients concur to shape this worrying phenomenon. Specifically, diet is fundamental for bees in order to develop an optimal immune response and more in general to sustain the deleterious effects of a parasitic challenge.

This research work aims to investigate at all levels of the biological organization, from genes to colony, how nutrition and environmental conditions influence the health of individual bees and bee colonies as affected by viruses and parasites (e.g. Varroa destructor and Deformed wing virus).

This work will produce information that may be implemented in novel strategies to prevent colony losses. 

Biography and Contacts

Davide Frizzera was born in 1990 in Rovereto (IT). He graduated in Environmental science and technology  at the University of Padova where he also obtained a Master in Environmental Science in 2016. In 2016 he worked for the “Museo delle Scienze di Trento - MUSE”as abiologist in the monitoring project of Aedes albopictus. In November 2016 he started a doctoral course by the PhD school of “Agriculture Science and Biotechnology” at the University of Udine.

frizzera.davide@spes.uniud.it

[Phone 0432558506]