Gut bacterial communities across 12 Ensifera (Orthoptera) at different feeding habits and its prediction for the insect with contrasting feeding habits

Abstract

Insect microbial symbioses play a critical role in insect lifecycle, and insect gut microbiome could be influenced by many factors. Studies have shown that host diet and taxonomy have a strong influence on insect gut microbial community. In this study, we performed sequencing of V3-V4 region of 16S rRNA gene to compare the composition and diversity of 12 Ensifera from 6 provinces of China. Moreover, the influences of feeding habits and taxonomic status of insects on their gut bacterial community were evaluated, which might provide reference for further application research. The results showed that Proteobacteria (45.66%), Firmicutes (34.25%) and Cyanobacteria (7.7%) were the predominant bacterial phyla in Ensifera. Moreover, the gut bacterial community composition of samples with different feeding habits was significantly different, which was irrespective of their taxa. The highest diversity of gut bacteria was found in the omnivorous Ensifera. Furthermore, common and unique bacteria with biomarkers were found based on the dietary characteristics of the samples. However, the bacterial community structure of the Ensifera samples was significantly different from that of Caelifera. Therefore, we concluded that feeding habits and taxonomic status jointly affect the gut bacterial community composition of the samples from Orthoptera. However, the influence of feeding habit dominates when taxonomy category below the suborder level. In addition, the dominant, common and unique bacterial community structure could be used to predict the contrastic feeding habits of insects belonging to Ensifera.

Monocot diet sources drive diversity of gut bacterial communities in Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) larvae

“…Cyanobacteria was the fourth dominant phyla in the FAW gut across the three diets used in this study. This result is in line with the studies by Zheng et al (2021) who reported that Cyanobacteria was the third dominant phyla in the gut of Ensifera (Orthoptera) with different feeding habits and the second dominant phyla in herbivorous Ensifera. Contrarily, Cyanobacteria were found in very low abundance in reared Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata (Coleoptera) (Lü et al, 2019) and in wild and mass-reared…”

The Role of Feeding Characteristics in Shaping Gut Microbiota Composition and Function of Ensifera (Orthoptera)

“…Previous studies found that the taxa with complex feeding habits had a higher gut bacterial diversity than those with single feeding habits [ 25 , 27 ]. This was also the result of our previous study on the gut bacterial diversity of Ensifera [ 36 ]. However, in this comprehensive study on gut bacteria, eukaryotes, viruses, and archaea by shotgun metagenomic sequencing, it was found that, although the omnivorous Gry had the most significant number of reads and contigs, its microbial diversity was not the highest.…”

“…We found that feeding characteristics were the main factor affecting the structure of the gut bacterial communities. The gut bacterial communities’ structure in Ensifera, from different taxa but with the same feeding habit, was similar [ 36 ]. Therefore, we selected three Ensifera species (Mec, Oce, and Gry) with high bacterial community diversity and minor intraspecific differences from the above samples to explore the similarities and differences in the gut microbiota’s composition and function mediated by feeding characteristics.…”

“…Feeding characteristics were the primary factor affecting the structure of the gut bacterial communities of Ensifera [ 36 ], and they significantly affected the gut microbial composition of other organisms [ 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 ]. This study explored the microbial community composition and function in three representatives of Ensifera mediated by feeding characteristics to deeply analyze the interaction between feeding habits and the gut microbiota.…”

“…In our previous study, the 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing technology was used for sequence analysis of the gut bacterial communities of 12 species of Ensifera from 5 families. It was found that feeding habits were the primary factors affecting the gut bacterial communities, and samples from different taxa with the same feeding habit showed similar gut bacterial community structures [ 36 ]. However, the microbial composition and functional diversity of the gut microbiota in Ensifera, especially the potential mechanism of the relationship between the function of the gut microbiota and feeding habits, remains undetermined.…”