Abstract
Bark beetles are destructive forest pests considering their remarkable contribution to forest depletion. Their association with fungi is useful against the challenges of survival on the noxious and nutritionally limited substrate, i.e., conifer tissues. Fungal symbionts help the beetles in nutrient acquisition and detoxification of toxic tree secondary metabolites. Although gut is the prime location for food digestion and detoxification, limited information is available on gut-mycobiome of bark beetles. The present study screened the gut-mycobiont from six bark beetles (five Ips and one non-Ips) from Scolytinae subfamily using high-throughput sequencing and explored their putative role in symbiosis with the host insect. Results revealed the predominance of four fungal classes- Sordariomycetes, Saccharomycetes, Eurothiomycetes, and Dothidomycetes in all bark beetles. Apart from these, Agaricomycetes, Leothiomycetes, Incertae sedis Basidiomycota, Tremellomycetes, Lecanoromycetes, and Microbotryomycetes were also documented in different beetles. Five Ips bark beetles share a consortium of core fungal communities in their gut tissues consisting of 47 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) belonging to 19 fungal genera. The majority of these core fungal genera belong to the phylum Ascomycota. LEfSe analysis revealed a set of species-specific fungal biomarkers in bark beetles. The present study identified the gut mycobiont assemblage in bark beetles and their putative ecological relevance. An enriched understanding of bark beetle-fungal symbiosis is not only filling the existing knowledge gap in the field but may also unleash an unforeseen potential for future bark beetle management.
Highlights
The evolutionary success of insects is based on myriad associations with microorganisms having complementary potential that is otherwise lacking in insects and restricts them when inhabiting an ecologically challenging niche or invading new environments (Linnakoski et al, 2012; Sun et al, 2013; Douglas, 2015; García-Fraile, 2018)
Illumina paired-end sequencing of the gut tissue of six bark beetles from the Scolytinae subfamily yielded a total of 4,564,713 reads, of which 4,400,177 reads were obtained after quality control tests
operational taxonomic units (OTUs) Abundance The comprehensiveness of sampling was represented by the Good’s coverage estimator (>99%), and the rarefaction curves that tend to attain a plateau indicating most of the gut fungal diversity in the bark beetles (BB) were sequenced (Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Figure 1)
Summary
The evolutionary success of insects is based on myriad associations with microorganisms having complementary potential that is otherwise lacking in insects and restricts them when inhabiting an ecologically challenging niche or invading new environments (Linnakoski et al, 2012; Sun et al, 2013; Douglas, 2015; García-Fraile, 2018). Gut-Inhabiting Mycobiont in Ips to study such evolutionary associations (i.e., symbiosis) concerning animal-plant ecology. Bark beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) and fungi association is one of such model systems. The evolution of bark beetle (BB)-fungi mutualisms is based on reciprocal interactions such as nutritional mutualisms, protective mutualisms, and dispersal mutualism (Biedermann and Vega, 2020). The high abundance of substances like lignin, hemicellulose, cellulose (i.e., bio-polymers with rich carbon content) in the wood is not accessible to beetles until prior degradation of microbes, i.e., fungi (Kirk and Cowling, 1984)
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