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Wolbachia and Spiroplasma could influence bacterial communities of the spider mite Tetranychus truncatus

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Abstract

The structures of arthropod bacterial communities are complex. These microbiotas usually provide many beneficial services to their hosts, whereas occasionally they may be parasitical. To date, little is known about the bacterial communities of Tetranychus truncatus and the factors contributing to the structure of its bacterial communities are unexplored yet. Here, we used four symbiont-infected T. truncatus strains—including one Wolbachia and Spiroplasma co-infected strain, two symbiont singly-infected strains and one symbiont uninfected strain—to investigate the influence of endosymbionts on the structure of the host mites’ microbiota. Based on 16S rRNA genes sequencing analysis, we found Wolbachia and Spiroplasma were the two most abundant bacteria in T. truncatus and the presence of both symbionts could not change the diversity of bacterial communities (based on alpha-diversity indexes such as ACE, Chao1, Shannon and Simpson diversity index). Symbiont infection did alter the abundance of many other bacterial genera, such as Megamonas and Bacteroides. The structures of bacterial communities differed significantly among symbiont-infected strains. These results suggested a prominent effect of Wolbachia and Spiroplasma on bacterial communities of the host T. truncatus. These findings advance our understanding of T. truncatus microbiota and will be helpful for further study on bacterial communities of spider mites.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Xie Kang and Chang-Wu Peng of Nanjing Agricultural University, China, for their help with the sample collection and rearing of spider mites. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments which helped us to improve the manuscript.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32020103011, 31871976, and 31901888).

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  1. Department of Entomology, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, Jiangsu, China

    Kun Yang, Han Chen, Xiao-Li Bing, Xue Xia, Yu-Xi Zhu & Xiao-Yue Hong

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10493_2021_589_MOESM1_ESM.tif

(TIF 2782 kb) Fig. S1 Rarefaction analysis of bacterial 16S rRNA gene libraries from all female Tetranychus truncatus samples. Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were grouped with a 97% similarity

10493_2021_589_MOESM2_ESM.tif

(TIF 2337 kb) Fig. S2 Venn diagram of OTUs found in female of four Tetranychus truncatus strains. A total of 2722 OTUs were observed and distributed in 4 spider mite strains

10493_2021_589_MOESM3_ESM.tif

(TIF 3245 kb) Fig. S3 Alpha-diversity index of female Tetranychus truncatus: (a) ACE, (b) Chao1, (c) Shannon, and (d) Simpson

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Yang, K., Chen, H., Bing, XL. et al. Wolbachia and Spiroplasma could influence bacterial communities of the spider mite Tetranychus truncatus. Exp Appl Acarol 83, 197–210 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10493-021-00589-4

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