Generational conservation of composition and diversity of field-acquired midgut microbiota in Anopheles gambiae (sensu lato) during colonization in the laboratory

Abstract

BackgroundThe gut microbiota is known to play a role in a mosquito vector’s life history, a subject of increasing research. Laboratory experiments are essential for such studies and require laboratory colonies. In this study, the conservation of field-obtained midgut microbiota was evaluated in laboratory-reared Anopheles gambiae (s.l.) mosquitoes continuously hatched in water from field breeding habitats.MethodsPupae and late instars were obtained from the field and reared, and the emerged adults were blood-fed. The eggs obtained from them were hatched in either water from the field or in dechlorinated tap water. The mosquito colonies were maintained for 10 generations. Midguts of female adults from unfed F0 (emerging from field-caught pupae and larvae), F5 and F10 were dissected out and genomic DNA was extracted for 16S metagenomic sequencing. The sequences were compared to investigate the diversity and bacterial compositional differences using ANCOM and correlation clustering methods.ResultsLess than 10% of the bacterial families identified had differential relative abundances between generational groups and accounted for 46% of the variation observed. Although diversity reduced in F10 mosquitoes during laboratory colonization (Shannon-Weaver; P-value < 0.05), 50% of bacterial genera were conserved in those bred continuously in field-water compared to 38% in those bred in dechlorinated tap water.ConclusionsTo our knowledge, this study is the first report on the assessment of gut bacterial community of mosquitoes during laboratory colonization and recommends the use of water from the natural breeding habitats if they are intended for microbiota research.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13071-019-3287-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Schistosomiasis Vector Snails and Their Microbiota Display a Phylosymbiosis Pattern

“…It would be interesting to test the possibility of microbiota transfers from the environment in different developmental stages when the definitive flora is not yet fully established. A recent study showed a loss of microbial communities from one generation to the next in laboratory reared mosquitoes (Akorli et al, 2019), which presents another avenue for our model to be further investigated.…”

Comprehensive characterization of internal and cuticle surface microbiota of laboratory-reared F1Anopheles albimanusoriginating from different sites

“…Previous findings showed that rearing mosquitoes in water from the field could preserve the field-derived internal microbiota in laboratory-colonized adult progeny of An. gambiae s. l. for several generations [37]. In addition, other studies, have shown that the microbiota in larval habitat water significantly influences the internal microbiota of emerging adult mosquitoes [40,41].…”

“…gambiae s.l. showed a reduction in bacterial diversity of the F5 progeny (the first point of measurement) that were reared in dechlorinated tap water in contrast to F0 [37]. Another study of Ae.…”

Persistence of Functional Microbiota Composition Across Generations

“…To test functional persistence across generations, we used the mosquito dataset from [29] and the plant dataset from [10] (Table 1). The first one comprises generations 0, 5 and 10 of two isolated mosquito populations bred with lab or field water, originally used to test if the microbiota is preserved or not under different lab breeding conditions (with the different water sources).…”

“…The datasets analysed during the current study are available in the datadryad and ENA repositories, https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.98jj7gk [29], https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/search?query=PRJEB20603 [10], https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/search?query=PRJEB14529 [30], https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/search?query=PRJNA290380 [31].…”