Abstract
Insect meals are considered promising, eco-friendly, alternative ingredients for aquafeed. Considering the dietary influence on establishment of functioning gut microbiota, the effect of the insect meal diets on the microbial ecology should be addressed. The present study assessed diet- and species-specific shifts in gut resident bacterial communities of juvenile reared Dicentrarchus labrax and Sparus aurata in response to three experimental diets with insect meals from three insects (Hermetia illucens, Tenebrio molitor, Musca domestica), using high-throughput Illumina sequencing of the V3–V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene. The dominant phyla were Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria in all dietary treatments. Anaerococcus sp., Cutibacterium sp. and Pseudomonas sp. in D. labrax, and Staphylococcus sp., Hafnia sp. and Aeromonas sp. in S. aurata were the most enriched shared species, following insect-meal inclusion. Network analysis of the dietary treatments highlighted diet-induced changes in the microbial community assemblies and revealed unique and shared microbe-to-microbe interactions. PICRUSt-predicted Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways were significantly differentiated, including genes associated with metabolic pathways. The present findings strengthen the importance of diet in microbiota configuration and underline that different insects as fish feed ingredients elicit species-specific differential responses of structural and functional dynamics in gut microbial communities.
Highlights
Edible insects are slowly making their appearance in Western culture [1] as a proposal to tackle the rapid growth of the population, which is expected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050(UN, 2017)
Most insect species are characterized by high fecundity and multivoltinism [4], ensuring a rapid yet more environmentally sustainable mass production, which requires similar amounts of energy but emits much less greenhouse gas compared to conventional livestock production [5,6]
With the exception of Antonopoulou et al [17], the effects of insects as aquafeed ingredients on the microbial communities of European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) have not been studied in depth despite their significance in the Mediterranean aquaculture. Using these two fish species as hosts and the same partial fish meal substitutes in aquafeeds, i.e., mealworm (Tenebrio molitor), black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens), and housefly (Musca domestica) larvae, this study investigated their gut microbial profiling and functionality
Summary
Edible insects are slowly making their appearance in Western culture [1] as a proposal to tackle the rapid growth of the population, which is expected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050(UN, 2017). Edible insects are slowly making their appearance in Western culture [1] as a proposal to tackle the rapid growth of the population, which is expected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050. More than 1900 insect species throughout the world have been an integral part of the human diet for centuries [2]. Among the many advantages that accompany the utilization of insects as an alternative source of edible protein is the high content and high nutritional value of protein [2,3], the adequate profile of amino acids [3], and the high feed conversion ratio [4]. Most insect species are characterized by high fecundity and multivoltinism [4], ensuring a rapid yet more environmentally sustainable mass production, which requires similar amounts of energy but emits much less greenhouse gas compared to conventional livestock production [5,6].
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