Abstract
The midgut microbiota of disease vectors plays a critical role in the successful transmission of human pathogens. The environment influences the microbiota composition; however, the relative mosquito-species contribution has not been rigorously disentangled from the environmental contribution to the microbiota structure. Also, the extent to which the microbiota of the adult sugar food source and larval water can predict that of the adult midgut and vice versa is not fully understood. To address these relationships, larvae and adults of Anopheles gambiae and Aedes albopictus were either reared separately or in a co-rearing system, whereby aquatic and adult stages of both species shared the larval water and sugar food source, respectively. Despite being reared under identical conditions, clear intra- and interspecies differences in midgut microbiota-composition were observed across seven cohorts, collected at different time points over a period of eight months. Fitting a linear model separately for each OTU in the mosquito midgut showed that two OTUs significantly differed between the midguts of the two mosquito species. We also show an effect for the sugar food source and larval water on the adult midgut microbiota. Our findings suggest that the mosquito midgut microbiota is highly dynamic and controlled by multiple factors.
Highlights
The midgut microbiota of disease vectors plays a critical role in the successful transmission of human pathogens
Our data revealed that despite being reared in the same insectary and given the same food source, significant intraspecies and interspecies variations in the midgut microbiota composition were observed across cohorts. We show that both larval water and adult sugar food source contribute to midgut microbiota composition in adult mosquitoes
Our results revealed that the microbial composition of the midguts of all female mosquitoes was significantly associated with all predictor variables tested, namely larval water, sugar fed to adults, cohort number, and mosquito species (Table 1; P = 0.001 for all variables, non-parametric MANOVA)
Summary
The midgut microbiota of disease vectors plays a critical role in the successful transmission of human pathogens. Previous studies on the mosquito gut-microbiota revealed significant differences in the microbiota composition between different species, and between individuals of the same species, rendering it difficult to assign a core microbiota They showed that the midgut microbiota is usually dominated by few phyla[8,9,10,11]. In Anopheles, analysis of the microbiota in 25 wild-caught mosquitoes of An. gambiae and An. coluzzii from Cameroon revealed that the large majority of bacteria in adult midguts belonged to Proteobacteria while in larval midguts this phylum was less represented. In Aedes, on the other hand, the analysis of total microbiota from adult field-caught and lab-reared Ae. albopictus mosquitoes showed that both were dominated by Proteobacteria and share other less abundant phyla[13]. Even the same species of bacteria (Pantoea stewartii) survived better in Ae. aegypti when isolated from Ae. aegypti than when isolated from An. gambiae suggesting that specific host-bacteria co-adaptation is a prerequisite for bacteria to persist as components of the microbiota[15]
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