Abstract
For a wide range of insect species, the microbiota has potential roles in determining host developmental programme, immunity and reproductive biology. The tea geometrid moths Ectropis obliqua and E. grisescens are two closely related species that mainly feed on tea leaves. Although they can mate, infertile hybrids are produced. Therefore, these species provide a pair of model species for studying the molecular mechanisms of microbiotal involvement in host reproductive biology. In this study, we first identified and compared the compositions of microbiota between these sibling species, revealing higher microbiotal diversity for E. grisescens. The microbiota of E. obliqua mainly comprised the phyla Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Cyanobacteria, whereas that of E. grisescens was dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Firmicutes. At the genus level, the dominant microbiota of E. grisescens included Wolbachia, Enterobacter and Pseudomonas and that of E. obliqua included Melissococcus, Staphylococcus and Enterobacter. Furthermore, we verified the rate of Wolbachia to infect 80 samples from eight different geographical populations, and the results supported that only E. grisescens harboured Wolbachia. Taken together, our findings indicate significantly different microbiotal compositions for E. obliqua and E. grisescens, with Wolbachia possibly being a curial factor influencing the reproductive isolation of these species. This study provides new insight into the mechanisms by which endosymbiotic bacteria, particularly Wolbachia, interact with sibling species.
Highlights
Important interactions of microbiota organisms with insects are very common in nature (Mao et al, 2018)
Reproductive interference exists between these sibling species (Zhang et al, 2016a). As these phenomena differ from those resulting from common reproductive isolation, whereby different species cannot mate and breed, we suggest that these sibling species constitute a suitable model pair for exploring reproductive isolation
The sibling species of tea geometrid moths E. obliqua and E. grisescens both feed on tea leaves
Summary
Important interactions of microbiota organisms with insects are very common in nature (Mao et al, 2018). Ectropis obliqua and E. grisescens are primary defoliators in tea plantations due to their wide distribution and destructive nature (Jiang et al, 2014; Zhang et al, 2014). Morphological and phylogenetic evidence supports that E. obliqua is closely related to E. grisescens These sibling species can mate but produce infertile hybrids (Xi et al, 2014). We previously found that F1 hybrids of E. obliqua and E. grisescens showed the characteristics including unbalanced sex ratio, lower hatchability of eggs, desynchronized development of larvae and infertility that resembled cytoplasmic incompatibility which was caused by some microbiota (Bourtzis et al, 1996; Zhang et al, 2014; Wang et al, 2019). We analysed and compared differences in E. grisescens and E. obliqua microbiotal composition and found that an obvious difference in the presence of Wolbachia may be a factor influencing their reproductive isolation
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