Evidence of phylosymbiosis in <em>Formica</em> ants
Jackson, Raphaella; Patapiou, Patapios A.; Golding, Gemma; Helanterä, Heikki; Economou, Chloe K.; Chapuisat, Michel; Henry, Lee M. (2023-05-05)
Jackson R, Patapiou PA, Golding G, Helanterä H, Economou CK, Chapuisat M and Henry LM (2023) Evidence of phylosymbiosis in Formica ants. Front. Microbiol. 14:1044286. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1044286
© 2023 Jackson, Patapiou, Golding, Helanterä, Economou, Chapuisat and Henry. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe20230907121380
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
Introduction: Insects share intimate relationships with microbes that play important roles in their biology. Yet our understanding of how host-bound microbial communities assemble and perpetuate over evolutionary time is limited. Ants host a wide range of microbes with diverse functions and are an emerging model for studying the evolution of insect microbiomes. Here, we ask whether phylogenetically related ant species have formed distinct and stable microbiomes.
Methods: To answer this question, we investigated the microbial communities associated with queens of 14 Formica species from five clades, using deep coverage 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing.
Results: We reveal that Formica species and clades harbor highly defined microbial communities that are dominated by four bacteria genera: Wolbachia, Lactobacillus, Liliensternia, and Spiroplasma. Our analysis reveals that the composition of Formica microbiomes mirrors the phylogeny of the host, i.e., phylosymbiosis, in that related hosts harbor more similar microbial communities. In addition, we find there are significant correlations between microbe co-occurrences.
Discussion: Our results demonstrate Formica ants carry microbial communities that recapitulate the phylogeny of their hosts. Our data suggests that the co-occurrence of different bacteria genera may at least in part be due to synergistic and antagonistic interactions between microbes. Additional factors potentially contributing to the phylosymbiotic signal are discussed, including host phylogenetic relatedness, host-microbe genetic compatibility, modes of transmission, and similarities in host ecologies (e.g., diets). Overall, our results support the growing body of evidence that microbial community composition closely depends on the phylogeny of their hosts, despite bacteria having diverse modes of transmission and localization within the host.
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