New work describes how immune defenses can be passed from generation to generation in a honey bee colony:

> Insects lack antibodies, the carriers of immunological memory in vertebrates. Therefore, it has been thought that insects are deprived of acquired immunity and only have innate defense mechanisms against pathogens. Recent research, however, has shown that insects are capable of high specificity in their defense reactions; indeed, insect immune defenses can recognize specific pathogens and prime offspring against them.

> Trans-generational immune priming (TGIP) was initially attributed to animals with antibody-based adaptive immune systems. The discovery that invertebrates, equipped only with innate immune responses, are also able to prime their offspring against infections has changed the understanding of innate immunity. Interestingly, even nonpathogenic bacteria in diet can trigger systemic immune responses in both the same generation and in the next. Cumulative evidence shows how maternal exposure to immune elicitors, and dead or living bacterial cells, leads to higher immunocompetence in the offspring.

> Hernandez-Lopez et al. (2014) showed that injecting honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens with dead Paenibacillus larvae (bacterium responsible for the American foulbrood disease) leads to higher resistance against this pathogen in the offspring. These findings have created a central dilemma in immunological physiology regarding how immune priming can be mediated by mechanisms other than antibodies.

Salmela, H., Amdam, G. V., & Freitak, D. (2015). Transfer of Immunity from Mother to Offspring Is Mediated via Egg-Yolk Protein Vitellogenin. PLOS Pathog, 11(7), e1005015.

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