Abstract

Bactrocera dorsalis is one of the most economically important fruit flies around the world. In this study, 454 pyrosequencing was used to identify the bacteria associated with different developmental stages of B. dorsalis. At ≥ 97% nucleotide similarity, total reads could be assigned to 172 Operational Taxonomic Units belonging to six phyla. Proteobacteria dominated in immature stages while Firmicutes dominated in adult stages. The most abundant families were Enterococcaceae and Comamondaceae. The genus Comamonas was most abundant in pupae whereas completely absent in adults. Some identified species had low sequence similarity to reported species indicating the possibility of novel taxa. However, a majority sequence reads were similar to sequences previously identified to be associated with Bactrocera correcta, suggesting a characteristic microbial fauna for this insect genus. The type and abundance of different bacterial groups varied across the life stages of B. dorsalis. Selection pressure exerted by the host insect as a result of its habitat and diet choices could be the reason for the observed shift in the bacteria groups. These findings increase our understanding of the intricate symbiotic relationships between bacteria and B. dorsalis and provide clues to develop potential biocontrol techniques against this fruit fly.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-30-2015

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Scientific Reports, v. 5, article 9470, p. 1-6.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep09470

Funding Information

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 31071690, 31371945), International Atomic Energy Agency (via Research Contract No. 17153 to CN), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2011PY055), and Excellent Curriculum Development for Postgraduate Students of Huazhong Agricultural University (2011KC01).

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Supplementary Information

srep09470-f1.jpg (40 kB)
Figure 1: Comparism of bacteria community in samples from different developmental stages of Bactrocera dorsalis.

srep09470-f2.jpg (20 kB)
Figure 2: Dendrogram showing the relationship of bacteria groups associated with different life stages of Bactrocera dorsalis: Jacknifed support values of 100 are shown.

srep09470-f3.jpg (61 kB)
Figure 3: Relative bacteria composition of different bacteria classes in the guts of different developmental stage of Bactrocers dorasalis: BDE- Bactrocera dorsalis egg, BD1L- Bactrocera dorsalis first instar larva, BD3L- Bactrocera dorsalis third instar larva, BDP- Bactrocera dorsalis pupa, BDF- Bactrocera dorsalis female, BDM- Bactrocera dorsalis male.

srep09470-f4.jpg (255 kB)
Figure 4: Heat maps showing bacterial family frequency distribution across the six different life stages.

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