Gut Bacterial Diversity in Different Life Cycle Stages of Adelphocoris suturalis (Hemiptera: Miridae)

Abstract

Bacteria and insects have a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. Bacteria participate in several physiological processes such as reproduction, metabolism, and detoxification of the host. Adelphocoris suturalis is considered a pest by the agricultural industry and is now a major pest in cotton, posing a serious threat to agricultural production. As with many insects, various microbes live inside A. suturalis. However, the microbial composition and diversity of its life cycle have not been well-studied. To identify the species and community structure of symbiotic bacteria in A. suturalis, we used the HiSeq platform to perform high-throughput sequencing of the V3–V4 region in the 16S rRNA of symbiotic bacteria found in A. suturalis throughout its life stages. Our results demonstrated that younger nymphs (1st and 2nd instar nymphs) have higher species richness. Proteobacteria (87.06%) and Firmicutes (9.43%) were the dominant phyla of A. suturalis. At the genus level, Erwinia (28.98%), Staphylococcus (5.69%), and Acinetobacter (4.54%) were the dominant bacteria. We found that the relative abundance of Erwinia was very stable during the whole developmental stage. On the contrary, the relative abundance of Staphylococcus, Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, and Corynebacterium showed significant dynamic changes at different developmental stages. Functional prediction of symbiotic bacteria mainly focuses on metabolic pathways. Our findings document symbiotic bacteria across the life cycle of A. suturalis, as well as differences in both the composition and richness in nymph and adult symbiotic bacteria. Our analysis of the bacteria in A. suturalis provides important information for the development of novel biological control strategies.

Diversity of bacterial symbionts associated with the tropical plant bug Monalonion velezangeli (Hemiptera: Miridae) revealed by high-throughput 16S rRNA sequencing.

“…Several of these symbionts (Romboutsia, Ignavibacterium, Clostridium, Paracoccus, Allobaculum, Methylobacterium, Sediminibacterium, Faecalibaculum, Faecalibacterium, Collinsella, Rothia and Sphingomonas) were found to be consistently present in all our samples of nymph and adult stages and we consider them as members of the insect gut-associated core microbiota. Compared with the microbiota associated with the cotton fleahopper P. seriatus (Hemiptera: Miridae) [38] and A. suturalis (Hemiptera: Miridae) [39], the composition at the genus level within M. velezangeli is clearly different, being dominated within P. seriatus by bacteria Diaphorobacter, Lactococcus, Pseudomonas, Pantoea and Izhakiella; and within A. suturalis by Erwinia, Acinetobacter, Staphylococcus, and Lactococcus. These differences in microbiota composition could be associated with environmental differences due to host-plant species, feeding habits and geographical origins.…”

“…The immature forms of M. velezangeli go through 5 nymphal instars that differ among them mainly on body size [37]. Diversity and functional characterization of symbiotic microbiota in Miridae plant bugs have been poorly studied, except for the strictly phytophagous cotton fleahopper Pseudatomoscelis seriatus [38] and the omnivorous Adelphocoris suturalis [39,40] to our knowledge. We consider M. velezangeli as a strict phytophagous insect based on the reports of host plant species identified for this plant bug [22][23][24], the lack of reports of other feeding habits and the fact that all known members of the mirid subfamily Bryocorinae are herbivorous as well [41,42].…”

Tardigrade Community Microbiomes in North American Orchards Include Putative Endosymbionts and Plant Pathogens

“…Pseudomonas was also detected in all four of the previous surveys of the tardigrade microbiome ( Vecchi et al, 2018 ; Kaczmarek et al, 2020 ; Mioduchowska et al, 2021 ; Zawierucha et al, 2022 ), and Vecchi et al (2018) identified it as part of the core tardigrade microbiome. Pseudomonas is also present in the microbiota of soil nematodes ( Adam et al, 2014 ; Dirksen et al, 2016 ; Zimmermann et al, 2020 ) and insects ( Hernández-García et al, 2017 ; Horgan et al, 2019 ; Xue et al, 2021 ). Notably, other Ecdysozoans (insects) act as vectors of P. syringae ( Stavrinides et al, 2009 ; Donati et al, 2017 ), which is one of the most agriculturally damaging Pseudomonas species ( Höfte and De Vos, 2006 ; Xin et al, 2018 ).…”

“…This OTU had a significantly higher relative abundance of 0.046% in tardigrades compared to 0.0044% in their substrate (Supplementary Tables S7, S9). While neither Erwinia nor Pantoea have previously been identified in tardigrades, Erwinia has been found in arthropods (Xue et al, 2021) and nematodes (Eberlein et al, 2016). Additionally, multiple phytopathogens in Pantoea and Erwinia are transmitted by insect vectors (Basset et al, 2000;Sasu et al, 2010;Ordax et al, 2015;Walterson and Stavrinides, 2015;Dutkiewicz et al, 2016).…”

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“…Pseudomonas was also detected in all four of the previous surveys of the tardigrade microbiome (Vecchi et al, 2018;Kaczmarek et al, 2020;Mioduchowska et al, 2021;Zawierucha et al, 2022), andVecchi et al (2018) identified it as part of the core tardigrade microbiome. Pseudomonas is also present in the microbiota of soil nematodes (Adam et al, 2014;Dirksen et al, 2016;Zimmermann et al, 2020) and insects (Hernández-García et al, 2017;Horgan et al, 2019;Xue et al, 2021). Notably, other Ecdysozoans (insects) act as vectors of P. syringae (Stavrinides et al, 2009;Donati et al, 2017), which is one of the most agriculturally damaging Pseudomonas species (Höfte and De Vos, 2006;Xin et al, 2018).…”