Natural Variation in Physicochemical Profiles and Bacterial Communities Associated with Aedes aegypti Breeding Sites and Larvae on Guadeloupe and French Guiana

Abstract

Aedes aegypti develop in aquatic habitats in which mosquito larvae are exposed to physicochemical elements and microorganisms that may influence their life cycle and their ability to transmit arboviruses. Little is known about the natural bacterial communities associated with A. aegypti or their relation to the biotic and abiotic characteristics of their aquatic habitats. We characterized the physicochemical properties and bacterial microbiota of A. aegypti breeding sites and larvae on Guadeloupe and in French Guiana. In addition, we explored whether geographic location, the type of breeding site and physicochemical parameters influenced the microbiota associated with this mosquito species. We used large-scale 16S rRNA gene sequencing of 160 breeding sites and 147 pools of A. aegypti larvae and recorded 12 physicochemical parameters at the sampled breeding sites. Ordination plots and multiple linear regression were used to assess the influence of environmental factors on the bacterial microbiota of water and larvae. We found territory-specific differences in physicochemical properties (dissolved oxygen, conductivity) and the composition of bacterial communities in A. aegypti breeding sites that influenced the relative abundance of several bacteria genera (e.g., Methylobacterium, Roseoccocus) on the corresponding larvae. A significant fraction of the bacterial Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

Exploring Changes in the Microbiota of Aedes albopictus: Comparison Among Breeding Site Water, Larvae, and Adults

“…While Herbiconiux was previously identified in Ae. aegypti larvae (Hery et al, 2021), and it is present also in our wild sampled larvae, Leifsonia was found in Ae. albopictus for the first time.…”

“…Additionally, specific physical and chemical parameters (i.e., oxygen and conductivity) were found to be associated with microbiota composition in Ae. aegypti (Hery et al, 2021). Thus, in an attempt to provide a qualitative analysis that could support the metagenomic results, a set of physical and chemical parameters were measured for both W Start and W End samples.…”

Influence of Larval Habitat Environmental Characteristics on Culicidae Immature Abundance and Body Size of Adult Aedes aegypti

“…Studies conducted in different environments showed a fuzzy association between physicochemical characteristics of larval habitats and container types. However, differences in some parameters such as total dissolved solids, water hardness, electrical conductivity, chemical oxygen demand and conductivity could be linked to container nature (i.e., natural or artificial) and water origin (Chatterjee et al, 2015;Gnanasoundari et al, 2017;Hery et al, 2020).…”

The effect of resource depletion on the thermal response of mosquito population fitness

“…Since resource depletion can mediate the regulatory effects of larval competition on the temperature-dependence of rm, it is also important to determine the temperature-dependence of resource availability itself (Huey and Kingsolver 2019). For example, recent studies show that mosquitoes can be reared exclusively on cultures of Asaia bacteria (Chouaia et al 2012, Souza et al 2019, that microbiota at mosquito breeding sites is spatially heterogenous (Hery et al 2021), and that larval exposure to microbial variability can affect adult mosquito life history traits (Dickson et al 2017). Microbial growth rates also increase with temperature to some optimum, so the concentration of food in the environment may also increase (Craine et al 2010, Cross et al 2015, Smith et al 2019).…”

“…Therefore, shifts in environmental temperature could alter the concentration of food in the environment, which could affect the growth of detritivore populations. While recent studies have provided useful insights into the relationships between microbes, detritus and mosquito vectors (Yee et al 2007;Chouaia et al 2012;Dickson et al 2017;Souza et al 2019;Hery et al 2021), future work could focus on the temperature-dependencies of these relationships.…”