Abstract
Microorganisms are acknowledged for their role in shaping insects’ evolution, life history and ecology. Previous studies have shown that microbial communities harbored within insects vary through ontogenetic development and among insects feeding on different host-plant species. In this study, we characterized the bacterial microbiota of the highly polyphagous Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae), at different instars and when feeding on different host-plant species. Our results show that the bacterial microbiota hosted within the Mediterranean fruit fly differs among instars and host-plant species. Most of the bacteria harbored by the Mediterranean fruit fly belong to the phylum Proteobacteria, including genera of Alphaproteobacteria such as Acetobacter and Gluconobacter; Betaprotobacteria such as Burkholderia and Gammaproteobacteria such as Pseudomonas.
Highlights
It is widely acknowledged that microorganisms harbored by insects, in particular bacteria, play an important role in their hosts’ biology and natural histories [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
We characterized for the first time the bacterial microbiota harbored by C. capitata at all insect instars, testing the hypothesis that diet can have an influence on the structure of larval microbial community
Using a metabarcoding approach we found that each instar of C. capitata has a different microbial community composition, and that different microbial communities were associated to larvae feeding on different host plants
Summary
It is widely acknowledged that microorganisms harbored by insects, in particular bacteria, play an important role in their hosts’ biology and natural histories [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Variations in microbiota composition among insects feeding on different host plant species suggest that insect microbiota may play a role in the definition of herbivorous insects’ host ranges [3, 4, 14, 15]. Variation in insect diet may influence the microbiota associated with polyphagous insects feeding on different host-plant species [14, 16,17,18]. The reorganization of insect microbiota composition across different instars has been
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