Microbiome comparison of Dermanyssus gallinae populations from different farm rearing systems and the presence of common endosymbiotic bacteria at developmental stages.

Abstract

The hematophagous arthropod, Dermanyssus gallinae (Poultry red mite, PRM) can cause remarkable economic losses in the poultry industry across the globe. Although overall composition of endosymbiotic bacteria has been shown in previous studies, how farm habitats influence the microbiome remains unclear. In the present study, we compared the bacterial communities of D. gallinae populations collected from the cage and free-range farms using next-generation sequences targeting the V3-V4 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene. The QIIME2 pipeline was followed in bioinformatic analyses. Proteobacteria represented a great majority of the total bacterial community of D. gallinae from both farming systems. More specifically, Bartonella-like bacteria (40.8%) and Candidatus Cardinium (21.5%) were found to be predominant genera in free-range and cage rearing systems, respectively. However, the microbiome variation based on farming systems was not statistically significant. In addition, the presence of the five common endosymbiotic bacteria (Wolbachia, Cardinium, Rickettsiella, Spiroplasma, and Schineria) was screened in different developmental stages of D. gallinae. Cardinium was detected in all developmental stages of D. gallinae. On the other hand, Wolbachia and Rickettsiella were only found in adults/nymphs, but neither in the eggs nor larvae. To our knowledge, this study provides the first microbiome comparison at genus-level in D. gallinae populations collected from different farm habitats and will contribute to the knowledge of the biology of D. gallinae.