Mechanisms of bacterial and fungal community assembly in leaf miners during transition from natural to laboratory environments.

Abstract

Environmental heterogeneity partly drives microbial succession in arthropods, while the microbial assembly mechanisms during environmental changes remain largely unknown. Here, we explored the temporal dynamics and assembly mechanisms within both bacterial and fungal communities in Liriomyza huidobrensis (Blanchard) during the transition from field to laboratory conditions. We observed a decrease in bacterial diversity and complexity of bacterial-fungal co-occurrence networks in leaf miners transitioning from wild to captive environments. Both neutral and null models revealed that stochastic processes, particularly drift (contributing over 70%), play a crucial role in governing bacterial and fungal community assembly. The relative contribution of ecological processes such as dispersal, drift, and selection varied among leaf miners transitioning from wild to captive states. Furthermore, we propose a hypothetical scenario for the assembly and succession of microbial communities in the leaf miner during the short- and long-term transition from the wild to captivity. Our findings suggest that environmental heterogeneity determines the ecological processes governing bacterial and fungal community assembly in leaf miners, offering new insights into microbiome and mycobiome assembly mechanisms in invasive pests amidst environmental change.