Abstract
Insects’ exoskeleton, gut, hemocoel, and cells are colonized by various microorganisms that often play important roles in their host life. Moreover, insects are frequently infected by vertically transmitted symbionts that can manipulate their reproduction. The aims of this study were the characterization of bacterial communities of four developmental stages of the fungivorous species Hoplothrips carpathicus (Thysanoptera: Phlaeothripidae), verification of the presence of Wolbachia, in silico prediction of metabolic potentials of the microorganisms, and sequencing its mitochondrial COI barcode. Taxonomy-based analysis indicated that the bacterial community of H. carpathicus contained 21 bacterial phyla. The most abundant phyla were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacterioidetes and Firmicutes, and the most abundant classes were Alphaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria and Betaproteobacteria, with different proportions in the total share. For pupa and imago (adult) the most abundant genus was Wolbachia, which comprised 69.95% and 56.11% of total bacterial population respectively. Moreover, similarity analysis of bacterial communities showed that changes in microbiome composition are congruent with the successive stages of H. carpathicus development. PICRUSt analysis predicted that each bacterial community should be rich in genes involved in membrane transport, amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, replication and repair processes.
Highlights
Insects are by far the most diverse and abundant animal group, in numbers of species globally, in ecological habits, and in biomass[1]
The wide range of phenomena in which bacteria are involved during insects life-cycle makes research focused on defining the microbiome profile of insects species of particular interest
Comparison with GenBank records and homology search shown high similarity of obtained H. carpathicus COI sequences with those obtained for other representatives of order Thysanoptera (≥86% similarity among the top 100 Blast hits on 100 subject sequences)
Summary
Insects are by far the most diverse and abundant animal group, in numbers of species globally, in ecological habits, and in biomass[1] They are chronically colonized by various microorganisms that are not overtly pathogenic and are often beneficial or even required by the insect host. H. carpathicus, like most of fungivorous species of this genus, lives in small cavities under the bark of dead trees or on/in fruiting bodies of different species of fungi. Recent studies have shown that biological compounds produced by F. fomentarius have many activities, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, apoptotic, and anti-diabetic[42,43,44,45,46] These compounds (e.g. triterpenoids) may be considered as toxins, especially for bacteria associated with fungivorous species. We sequenced the mitochondrial COI barcode of H. carpathicus to facilitate future molecular identification
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