Influence of dietary aconitine and nicotine on the gut microbiota of two lepidopteran herbivores

Abstract

The gut microbiota plays an important role in pheromone production, pesticide degradation, vitamin synthesis, and pathogen prevention in the host animal. Therefore, similar to gut morphology and digestive enzyme activity, the gut microbiota may also get altered under plant defensive compound-induced stress. To test this hypothesis, Dendrolimus superans larvae were fed either aconitineor nicotine-treated fresh leaves of Larix gmelinii, and Lymantria dispar larvae were fed either aconitine-or nicotine-treated fresh leaves of Salix matsudana. Subsequently, the larvae were sampled 72hr after diet administration and DNA extracted from larval enteric canals were employed for gut microbial 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing (338 F and 806 R primers). The sequence analysis revealed that dietary nicotine and aconitine influenced the dominant bacteria in the larval gut and determined their abundance. Moreover, the effect of either aconitine or nicotine on D. superans and L. dispar larvae had a greater dependence on insect species than on secondary plant metabolites. These findings further our understanding of the interaction between herbivores and host plants and the coevolution of plants and insects. K E Y W O R D S aconitine, defensive plant secondary metabolite, gut microbiota, herbivores, lepidopteran, nicotine Jian-Yong Zeng and De-Dong Wu contributed equally to this study.

Similar Bacterial Communities among Different Populations of a Newly Emerging Invasive Species, Tuta absoluta (Meyrick)

“…: Saturniidae) [ 29 ]. Meanwhile, gut microbiota of these insects are significantly affected by developmental stage [ 19 , 21 ], food/host plant type [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 30 , 31 , 32 ], geographical location [ 23 , 29 ], environment [ 12 , 33 ], and pathogen invasion [ 18 ]. Even though the microbiota of several distinct feeding guilds, including foliage feeder and fruit borer, have been explored, little is known about that of lepidopteran leaf miners.…”

Effect of Lactobacillus Plantarum on the Growth and Development and Gut Microbial Diversity of Spodoptera Litura

“…4). This suggests their sensitivity to dietary administration and may help elucidate important physiological functions in the larvae (Zeng et al 2020). The symbiotic gut bacterial community provides advantages to host insects via various mechanisms, such as involvement in the secretion of digestive enzymes, aiding survival with the best available diet, vitamin synthesis, improvement in digestion efficiency, and pathogen prevention (Berenbaum et al 1988;Douglas et al 1992;Behar et al 2008;Osborne et al 2009;Koch & Schmid et al 2011;Cheng et al 2017;Al-Ghamdi et al 2018); hence, they act as "microbial intermediaries" to compensate for the lack of certain biosynthetic and metabolic capabilities.…”

Integrated Microbiome–Metabolome Analysis Reveals Stage-Dependent Alterations in Bacterial Degradation of Aromatics in Leptinotarsa decemlineata

“…Consistently, the microbiota are widely distributed in the larval or/and adult guts (Jing et al, 2020 ). These gut microbiota are involved in the breakdown of noxious compounds in numerous insect species in Coleoptera (Ceja-Navarro et al, 2015 ; Berasategui et al, 2017 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ), Lepidoptera (Vilanova et al, 2016 ; Zeng et al, 2020 ), Diptera (Griffin and Reed, 2020 ), Hymenoptera (Wu et al, 2020 ), and Isoptera (Van Dexter and Boopathy, 2019 ).…”