Abstract
The gut microbiomes of insects were known to have great impact on their physiological properties for survival like nutrition, behaviour and health. In nature, spiders are one of the main predators of insects and yet their gut microbiomes remain unclear. It is important to explore the gut microbiomes of spiders in the wild to gain an insight on the host-bacterial relationship. Here, we studied the diversity and structure of gut bacterial communities of seven spider species belonging to two families i.e. Thomisidae and Oxyopidae from different states of India. Our data revealed a total of 16 bacterial phyla with Proteobacteria as predominant group in Thomisidae and Firmicutes in Oxyopidae.The core bacterial communities in the spider guts include the genera of Acinetobacter, Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium, Cutibacterium, and Pseudomonas. The genus Paraclostridium was observed for the first time and only in one spider species i.e. Peucetia viridans. Our data also indicated a higher gut bacterial community similarity between spider species belonging to Thomisidae as compared to those belonging to Oxyopidae. Furthermore, PICRUSt2 analysis predicted the presence of nine active functional metabolic pathways related to the metabolism of fatty acids and sugar, degradation of organic compounds, and biosynthesis of vitamin E.
Highlights
The gut microbiome significantly impacts the several metabolic activities of arthropods and helps us to understand their diversification, adaptation to novel habitat, and evolutionary patterns (Esposti and Romero, 2017)
The obtained sequences were clustered into 5039 OTUs at 99% identity clusters, which further reduced to 965 OTUs for downstream analysis after the removal of singletons, low variance, and low abundance features, etc
Venn analysis revealed 5039 OTUs, of which 16% of the annotated OTUs was shared between both spider families, whereas 35% OTUs in Oxyopidae and 48% OTUs in Thomisidae were reported as unique (Figure 1A)
Summary
The gut microbiome significantly impacts the several metabolic activities of arthropods and helps us to understand their diversification, adaptation to novel habitat, and evolutionary patterns (Esposti and Romero, 2017). The abundance of insects is dependent on their countless relationships with bacterial communities that were known for multiple metabolic activities like diet-nutrient upgradation, endosymbiosis, digestive aids, mating, and reproductive systems (Klepzig et al, 2009; Engel and Moran, 2013). Advanced sequencing techniques like next-generation sequencing (NGS) have led researchers to explore the gut bacterial communities in honeybee (Anjum et al, 2018), mosquito (Muturi et al, 2017), and moths (Snyman et al, 2016), along with their potential role in body metabolism and evolutionary patterns. Very little is known about the structure of spider gut bacterial communities and their potential metabolic functions. Spiders are the most diverse group of the class Arachnida, which are widely distributed across the globe and play a crucial role in maintaining the ecological balance through a prey–predator relationship (Michalko and Pekár, 2015; World Spider Catalog, 2020).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
