Abstract
Gut microbiota mediate the nutritional metabolism and play important roles in human obesity. Diapausing insects accumulate large fat reserves and develop obese phenotypes in order to survive unfavorable conditions. However, the possibility of an association between gut microbiota and insect diapause has not been investigated. We used the Illumina MiSeq platform to compare gut bacterial community composition in nondiapause- (i.e. reproductive) and diapause-destined female cabbage beetles, Colaphellus bowringi, a serious pest of vegetables in Asia. Based on variation in the V3-V4 hypervariable region of 16S ribosomal RNA gene, we identified 99 operational taxonomic units and 17 core microbiota at the genus level. The relative abundance of the bacterial community differed between reproductive and diapause-destined female adults. Gut microbiota associated with human obesity, including Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria, showed a good correlation with diapause. This association between gut microbiota and diapause in the cabbage beetle may open a new avenue for studying insect diapause, as well as developing a natural insect obesity model with which to explore the mechanisms responsible for human obesity.
Highlights
In recent years a growing body of evidence has demonstrated the close relationship between gut microbiota and obesity in mammals[10]
We investigated the association between gut microbiota and reproductive diapause preparation in the cabbage beetle, Colaphellus bowringi, a serious pest of vegetables in Asia[16]
To ask whether gut microbiota is associated with diapause, we compared the composition and diversity of the gut microbiota of reproductive and diapause-destined female C. bowringi at 1 and 3 days PE (Fig. 1)
Summary
The 12 species were from the 10 identified genera, and the other 27 genera had not been annotated to species due to the very similar sequences of near-neighbor species. These results indicate a high diversity of gut microbiota in both reproductive and diapause-destined female C. bowringi. The number of microbiota species identified eventually plateaued, indicating that sufficient sequencing data had been obtained (Fig. 3A). After the normalization of data by referencing the minimum number of sequences (D-3d), the phase difference between D-1d and R-3d groups indicated an apparent difference (P = 0.032) in the diversity of gut microbiota between reproductive and diapause-destined females.
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