16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing reveals dominance of Actinobacteria in Rhodnius pallescens compared to Triatoma maculata midgut microbiota in natural populations of vector insects from Colombia

Comparison of the Bacterial Gut Microbiome of North American Triatoma spp. With and Without Trypanosoma cruzi

“…Previous reports on the bacterial gut microbiome of triatomines have found infection with T. cruzi to be associated with higher bacterial diversity in the gut microbiome (Montoya-Porras et al, 2018;Rodríguez-Ruano et al, 2018). Contrary to those findings, in this study, which included a much larger number of individual samples, we found that microbial species diversity is only weakly structured by triatomine species, and is not structured by T. cruzi infection, sex, collection location, blood meal status, or DTU strain type.…”

“…Bacterial gut communities among different arthropods are known to vary widely in composition, function, and response to the environment (Engel and Moran, 2013;Menchaca et al, 2013). Gut microbiome studies in South American triatomines further indicate this high level of variability (da Mota et al, 2012;Gumiel et al, 2015;Díaz et al, 2016;Montoya-Porras et al, 2018;Waltmann et al, 2019). da Mota et al (2012) report relatively low overall species complexity in the gut microbiomes of South American triatomine bugs.…”

“…To date, few studies have examined the gut microbiome of triatomine vectors, and even fewer have looked at Triatoma spp. collected in the United States (da Mota et al, 2012;Gumiel et al, 2015;Díaz et al, 2016;Montoya-Porras et al, 2018;Rodríguez-Ruano et al, 2018;Waltmann et al, 2019). The composition and diversity of insect gut bacteria could play a significant role, not only in the life cycle of the insect itself (Rodríguez-Ruano et al, 2018), but also in relation to the life cycles of the parasites that they vector, including whether the insect is able to competently harbor and/or transmit various microbes to hosts (Engel and Moran, 2013;Goodrich Julia et al, 2014;Teotônio et al, 2019).…”

Ontogeny, species identity and environment dominate microbiome dynamics in wild populations of kissing bugs (Triatominae)

“…In our results, Dietzia, a bacterium closely related to Rhodococcus [93], is the dominant bacterium in late instars of T. rubida, T. protracta, and T. lecticularia. Dietzia has been described from other triatomine species [33,35,36,[42][43][44] and other hematophagous insects (Aedes albopictus [94], Glossina pallidipes [95]), suggesting it may be an important mutualist. However, unlike typical primary symbionts, Dietzia does not seem to be transmitted vertically.…”

“…Since 2015, twelve studies have investigated triatomine microbiomes using next-generation sequencing (NGS) tools. Unfortunately, the data lacks methodological consistency, having been retrieved from a wide variety of DNA templates, including pooled or individual bodies, entire abdomens, the distal part of the abdomen, whole guts, midguts, faeces, and cultured bacterial colonies [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44], and often further complicated by other variables (e.g. sex, locality, instar, T. cruzi infection status).…”