Abstract
In light of the declining global malaria burden attained largely due to insecticides, a deeper understanding of the factors driving insecticide resistance is needed to mitigate its growing threat to malaria vector control programs. Following evidence of microbiota-mediated insecticide resistance in agricultural pests, we undertook a comparative study of the microbiota in mosquitoes of differing insecticide resistance status. The microbiota of wild-caught Anopheles albimanus, an important Latin American malaria vector, that were resistant (FEN_Res) or susceptible (FEN_Sus) to the organophosphate (OP) insecticide fenitrothion were characterized and compared using whole metagenome sequencing. Results showed differing composition of the microbiota and its functions between FEN_Res and FEN_Sus, with significant enrichment of OP-degrading bacteria and enzymes in FEN_Res compared to FEN_Sus. Lower bacterial diversity was observed in FEN_Res compared to FEN_Sus, suggesting the enrichment of bacterial taxa with a competitive advantage in response to insecticide selection pressure. We report and characterize for the first time whole metagenomes of An. albimanus, revealing associations between the microbiota and phenotypic resistance to the insecticide fenitrothion. This study lays the groundwork for further investigation of the role of the mosquito microbiota in insecticide resistance.
Highlights
Insecticide resistance is a rapidly emerging threat to global malaria control efforts[1,2], in sub-Saharan Africa, where the greatest burden of disease lies[3]
Many of these studies have focused on characterizing the microbiota of medically important mosquito genera[23,24,25,26,27,28], as well as identifying their role in mosquito behavior, biology, and pathogen transmission[29,30], with a few studies suggesting their potential role in insecticide resistance[31,32,33,34]
Read lengths ranged from 60–232 bp after quality trimming, with 63% (FEN_Res) and 68% (FEN_Sus) of total reads aligning to bacterial proteins after host (An. albimanus) genome removal
Summary
Insecticide resistance is a rapidly emerging threat to global malaria control efforts[1,2], in sub-Saharan Africa, where the greatest burden of disease lies[3]. Malaria vector control relies primarily on the use of indoor residual spraying (IRS) and long lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) to reduce vector populations and protect people from potentially infectious mosquito bites[1,6]. These approaches both utilize chemical insecticides that can select for insecticide resistance in the vector populations they target[7,8]. The findings presented here show differences between the microbiota of FEN_Res and FEN_Sus, as well as associations between the mosquito microbiota and xenobiotic degradation
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