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Gut bacterial communities and their contribution to performance of specialist Altica flea beetles

Microbial Ecology volume 80, pages 946–959 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Host plant shifts are a common mode of speciation in herbivorous insects. Although insects can evolve adaptations to successfully incorporate a new host plant, it is becoming increasingly recognized that the gut bacterial community may play a significant role in allowing insects to detoxify novel plant chemical defenses. Here, we examined differences in gut bacterial communities between Altica flea beetle species that feed on phylogenetically unrelated host plants in sympatry. We surveyed the gut bacterial communities of three closely related flea beetles from multiple locations using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. The results showed that the beetle species shared a high proportion (80.7%) of operational taxonomic units. Alpha-diversity indicators suggested that gut bacterial diversity did not differ among host species, whereas geography had a significant effect on bacterial diversity. In contrast, analyses of beta-diversity showed significant differences in gut bacterial composition among beetle species when we used species composition and relative abundance metrics, but there was no difference in composition when species presence/absence and phylogenetic distance indices were used. Within host beetle species, gut bacterial composition varied significantly among sites. A metagenomic functionality analysis predicted that the gut microbes had functions involved in xenobiotic biodegradation and metabolism as well as metabolism of terpenoids and polyketides. These predictions, however, did not differ among beetle host species. Antibiotic curing experiments showed that development time was significantly prolonged, and there was a significant decline in body weight of newly emerged adults in beetles lacking gut bacteria, suggesting the beetles may receive a potential benefit from the gut microbe-insect interaction. On the whole, our results suggest that although the gut bacterial community did not show clear host-specific patterns among Altica species, spatiotemporal variability is an important determinant of gut bacterial communities. Furthermore, the similarity of communities among these beetle species suggests that microbial facilitation may not be a determinant of host plant shifts in Altica.

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Funding

This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31672334).

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beichen West Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100101, China

    Jing Wei, Wen-Zhu Li, Xing-Ke Yang & Huai-Jun Xue

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jing Wei

  3. Department of Biology, Syracuse University, 107 College Place, Syracuse, NY, 13244, USA

    Kari A. Segraves

  4. Archbold Biological Station, 123 Main Drive, Venus, FL, 33960, USA

    Kari A. Segraves

Authors
  1. Jing Wei
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  2. Kari A. Segraves
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  3. Wen-Zhu Li
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  4. Xing-Ke Yang
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  5. Huai-Jun Xue
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xing-Ke Yang or Huai-Jun Xue.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Fig. S1

Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) plots visualizing gut bacterial community dissimilarities among locations within each host species (A. cirsicola, A. fragariae and A. viridicyanea). a locations within A. cirsicola; b locations within A. fragariae; c locations within A. viridicyanea. R and p values are from Analysis of Similarities (ANOSIM). (JPG 2130 kb)

Fig. S2

Difference of gut phylogenetic community composition based on the similarity test of PerMANOVA. a comparison of host species (A. cirsicola, A. fragariae and A. viridicyanea); b among sites within A. cirsicola; c among sites within A. fragariae; d among sites within A. viridicyanea. (JPG 1440 kb)

Fig. S3

Metagenomic functionality of the gut bacterial communities from different beetle species predicted from the 16S rRNA sequences using PICRUSt. (JPG 2084 kb)

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Wei, J., Segraves, K.A., Li, WZ. et al. Gut bacterial communities and their contribution to performance of specialist Altica flea beetles. Microb Ecol 80, 946–959 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-020-01590-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-020-01590-x

Keywords

  • Adaptation
  • Antibiotic treatment
  • Body weight
  • Development time
  • Speciation