Abstract
Microbial communities can be critical for many metazoans, which can lead to the observation of phylosymbiosis with phylogenetically related species sharing similar microbial communities. Most of the previous studies on phylosymbiosis were conducted across the host families or genera. However, it is unclear whether the phylosymbiosis signal is still prevalent at lower taxonomic levels. In this study, 54 individuals from six species of the fig wasp genus Ceratosolen (Hymenoptera: Agaonidae) collected from nine natural populations and their associated microbiota were investigated. The fig wasp species were morphologically identified and further determined by mitochondrial CO1 gene fragments and nuclear ITS2 sequences, and the V4 region of 16S rRNA gene was sequenced to analyze the bacterial communities. The results suggest a significant positive correlation between host genetic characteristics and microbial diversity characteristics, indicating the phylosymbiosis signal between the phylogeny of insect hosts and the associated microbiota in the lower classification level within a genus. Moreover, we found that the endosymbiotic Wolbachia carried by fig wasps led to a decrease in bacterial diversity of host-associated microbial communities. This study contributes to our understanding of the role of host phylogeny, as well as the role of endosymbionts in shaping the host-associated microbial community.
Highlights
Microbes play important roles in hosts’ biology
After constructing the host phylogenetic tree by Maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian methods, we found that the same dendrogram was obtained from the two methods, and the phylogenetic relationship of all the species was well defined by c oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) genes combined with internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) sequences (Supplementary Figure 1)
Based on the approaches of Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD), jMOTU, bPTP, and GYMC, all the samples were defined as nine clades, which was consistent with the results obtained from phylogenetic analysis (Figure 1)
Summary
All insects are colonized by microbes, and the microbiota accounts for 1–10% of the insect’s biomass (Douglas, 2015). Bacterial symbionts have been accepted by biologists as considerable drivers of insect nutrition, protection, detoxification, behavior, reproduction, communication, and evolution (Douglas, 2015; Salcedo-Porras et al, 2020). Symbioses are formed by complex multi-part interactions, including interactions between the hosts and their resident microbiota as well as interactions within the microbial community. Under these circumstances, binary interactions between hosts and endosymbionts
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