Metagenomic approach of associated fungi with <i>Megaplatypus mutatus</i> (Coleoptera: Platypodinae)

Abstract

Highlights• There were no significant effects of host plant and location on fungal richness.• Two fungal species, belonging to Fusarium and Candida genera, were present in all the studied associations.• Results suggest that host plant identity would not be crucial to determine the composition of fungal communities associated to Megaplatypus mutatus. AbstractMegaplatypus mutatus is a major forest pest in Argentina and an emerging pest in Europe. In this study the multitrophic interactions between M. mutatus and associated fungi were assessed with a metagenomics approach (454-pyrosequencing). A total of 270 collection points from insect galleries from three locations in Argentina were pooled for pyrosequencing analyses. Two hosts, Populus deltoides and Casuarina cunninghamiana, were independently evaluated to characterize the fungal communities associated to M. mutatus; compare the culture-independent approach with previous culturing studies, in terms of data recovery related to the fungal community composition, and test the specificity of the fungal communities amongst locations and hosts. A Generalized Linear Mixed Model was performed to compare the fungal richness in each dataset, which showed no significant differences between taxa richness amongst locations. Principal Coordinates Analyses showed a separation between fungal communities within the same host, suggesting that host identity would not be crucial to determine the specificity in fungal communities. Candida insectalens and one Fusarium species, present in all hosts and locations, achieved 37.6% of the total relative frequency per taxa. These results complement the data from culturing methods previously reported, thus improving the accuracy and understanding of the fungal assemblages associated to M. mutatus.

Epibiotic Fungal Communities of Three Tomicus spp. Infesting Pines in Southwestern China

“…Miller et al [33] reported that 435 OTUs were obtained from T. piniperda. Because extensive data filtering can potentially skew species composition, OTU numbers between this study and previously studies cannot be readily compared, but certain types of fungal-community composition were similar; for example, yeast and ophiostomatoid fungi were abundant and frequent among bark beetle species [14,31,33].…”

“…However, the traditional approaches of analyzing fungal communities are limited in throughput and affected by methodological biases of culture-based techniques, which could lead to biases in fungal-diversity characterization due to the low number of isolates recovered. By comparison, the application of next-generation sequencing technologies, such as high-throughput sequencing (HTS), can overcome these limitations and thus help reveal a higher taxonomic diversity and richer fungal-community structure associated with bark beetles [6,14,[31][32][33].…”