Characterization of gut bacterial flora of Apis mellifera from north-west Pakistan

Abstract

Gut microbiota has been recognized to play a beneficial role in honey bees (). Present study was designed to characterize the gut bacterial flora of honey bees in north-west Pakistan. Total 150 aerobic and facultative anaerobic bacteria from guts of 45 worker bees were characterized using biochemical assays and 16S rDNA sequencing followed by bioinformatics analysis. The gut isolates were classified into three bacterial phyla of Firmicutes (60%), Proteobacteria (26%) and Actinobacteria (14%). Most of the isolates belonged to genera and families of ,, ,, ,, , and . Many of these bacteria were tolerant to acidic environments and fermented sugars, hence considered beneficial gut inhabitants and involved the maintenance of a healthy microbiota. However, several opportunistic commensals that proliferate in the hive environment including members group and were also identified. This is the first report on bee gut microbiota from north-west Pakistan geographically situated at the crossroads of Indian subcontinent and central Asia.

Insights into the bacterial symbiont diversity in spiders

“…However, there have been no reports regarding the gut bacteria communities of spiders until now. Almost all of the nonendosymbionts present (except Pseudonocardia) in our study were detected in the gut of some insects (Anjum et al, 2017;Gupta et al, 2014;Snyman, Gupta, Bezuidenhout, Claassens, & van den Berg, 2016;Wang, Gilbreath, Kukutla, Yan, & Xu, 2011). Moreover, the bacteria from genus Pseudomonas, Citrobacter and Lactococcus were also found in the gut of a predatory beetle Poecilus chalcites (Lehman, Lundgren, & Petzke, 2009) Also as a kind of predator, the gut bacteria of spiders may be similar with the gut bacterial structure of predatory insects.…”

Taking insight into the gut microbiota of three spider species: No characteristic symbiont was found corresponding to the special feeding style of spiders

“…Burkholderia and Ralstonia were the most dominant bacterial genera detected in the spider guts in this study. Ralstonia was also found in bees (Anjum et al, 2018;), and Burkholderia was distributed in mosquitoes (Charan et al, 2016), stinkbugs (Kikuchi, Hosokawa, & Fukatsu, 2007), and flies (Vivero, Jaramillo, Cadavid-Restrepo, Soto, & Herrera, 2016). Burkholderia often occurs in the natural environment (Compant, Nowak, Coenye, Clément, & Ait Barka, 2008).…”

“…In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in the gut bacteria of arthropods with the advent of next‐generation sequencing (NGS) technology. The diversity of gut bacteria has been studied in a range of insects and ticks (Anjum et al, ; Muturi, Ramirez, Rooney, & Kim, ; Snyman, Gupta, Bezuidenhout, Claassens, & Van dBJ, ; Waite et al, ). Gut bacteria have a great impact on their insect hosts, such as resistance against parasites and pathogens (Dillon, Vennard, & Charnley, ; Koch & Schmid‐Hempel, ), nutrient supplementation (Eichler & Schaub, ; Hongoh et al, ), intestinal cell renewal and developmental rate (Shin et al, ), and digestion of dietary compounds (Gaio et al, ).…”

“…In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in the gut bacteria of arthropods with the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. The diversity of gut bacteria has been studied in a range of insects and ticks (Anjum et al, 2018;Muturi, Ramirez, Rooney, & Kim, 2017;Snyman, Gupta, Bezuidenhout, Claassens, & Van dBJ, 2016;Waite et al, 2015). Gut bacteria have a great impact on their insect throughout the world.…”

The honey bee gut microbiota: strategies for study and characterization

“…The faecal origin of the honey bee’s microbiota, a theory supported by data collected by Powell et al () and Martinson et al (), suggests that most worker bees within a hive should have similar microbiota, and this is generally observed to be the case, with minimal differences in composition as well as taxonomy (Martinson et al ., ; ; Moran et al ., ). A preliminary review of characterized microbiota from different countries shows no more significant differences than those observed from hive to hive (Martinson et al ., ; Disayathanoowat et al ., ; Moran et al ., ; Kwong et al ., ; Anjum et al ., ), and although strain level differences may exist, the insufficient resolution of popular short‐read 16S amplicon methods makes it difficult to characterize these strain differences efficiently (Powell et al ., ).…”