Effects of diet type, developmental stage, and gut compartment in the gut bacterial communities of two Cerambycidae species (Coleoptera)

Abstract

The gut bacterial community of wood-feeding beetles has been examined for its role on plant digestion and biocontrol method development. Monochamus alternatus and Psacothea hilaris, both belonging to the subfamily Lamiinae, are woodfeeding beetles found in eastern Asia and Europe and generally considered as destructive pests for pine and mulberry trees, respectively. However, limited reports exist on the gut bacterial communities in these species. Here, we characterized gut bacterial community compositions in larva and imago of each insect species reared with host tree logs and artificial diets as food sources. High-throughput 454 pyrosequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA gene revealed 225 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) based on a 97% sequences similarity cutoff from 138,279 sequence reads, the majority of which were derived from Proteobacteria (48.2%), Firmicutes (45.5%), and Actinobacteria (5.2%). The OTU network analysis revealed 7 modules with densely connected OTUs in specific gut samples, in which the distributions of Lactococcus-, Kluyvera-, Serratia-, and Enterococcus-related OTUs were distinct between diet types or developmental stages of the host insects. The gut bacterial communities were separated on a detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) plot and by c-means fuzzy clustering analysis, according to diet type. The results from this study suggest that diet was the main determinant for gut bacterial community composition in the two beetles.

Peer Review #3 of "The microbiome profiling of fungivorous black tinder fungus beetle Bolitophagus reticulatus reveals the insight into bacterial communities associated with larvae and adults (v0.2)"

“…Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes phyla, as well as Alpha-and Gammaproteobacteria classes have been listed as the most abundant bacterial groups in various insect species (e.g. Colman, Toolson & Takacs-Vesbach, 2012;Jones, Sanchez & Fierer, 2013;Yun et al, 2014;Kim et al, 2017), and also in those cultivating fungi (Aylward et al, 2014). Moreover, identified patterns of the abundance remained in congruence with the results of our previous study focused on microbial communities associated with Hoplothrips carpathicus (Thysanoptera), which also inhabits fruiting bodies of F. fomentarius (Kaczmarczyk et al, 2018).…”

First Insight into Microbiome Profiles of Myrmecophilous Beetles and Their Host, Red Wood Ant Formica polyctena (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)—A Case Study

“…We found that all tested bacterial communities were predominated by three phyla (Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Firmicutes), with each comprising a different share of the microbiome depending on species or sample tested (Table S1). Those phyla are frequently listed as the most abundant in bacterial communities associated with insect taxa [61][62][63][64], including ants [49,[65][66][67][68][69][70] and myrmecophilous caterpillars of Lycaenidae butterflies [71][72][73]. In some cases, the joint abundance of those phyla may exceed even 90% of bacterial community membership [63].…”

Peer Review #1 of "Antimicrobial resistance and genetic relationships of enterococci from siblings and non-siblings Heliconius erato phyllis caterpillars (v0.1)"

“…Hammer et al (2014) reported that Enterococcus was the most abundant genus found in immature stages and adults of H. erato from Panama. Furthermore, it has also been reported in insects of other orders, such as Coleoptera (Kim et al, 2017), Hymenoptera (Audisio et al, 2011), and Diptera (Ghosh et al, 2014). A characteristic of this genus is its intrinsic resistance to several antimicrobial agents and a great ability to transfer and acquire resistant genes (Hollenbeck & Rice, 2012).…”