Knowledge about the gut bacterial communities associated with insects is essential to understand their roles in the physiology of the host. In the present study, the gut bacterial communities of a laboratory-reared insecticide-susceptible (IS), and a field-collected insecticide-resistant (IR) population of a major rice pest, the brown planthopper Nilaparvata lugens, were evaluated. The deep-sequencing analysis of the V3 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene was performed using Illumina and the sequence data were processed using QIIME. The toxicological bioassays showed that compared with the IS population, IR population exhibited 7.9-, 6.7-, 14.8-, and 18.7-fold resistance to acephate, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and buprofezin, respectively. The analysis of the alpha diversity indicated a higher bacterial diversity and richness associated with the IR population. The dominant phylum in the IS population was Proteobacteria (99.86%), whereas the IR population consisted of Firmicutes (46.06%), followed by Bacteroidetes (30.8%) and Proteobacteria (15.49%). Morganella, Weissella, and Enterococcus were among the genera shared between the two populations and might form the core bacteria associated with N. lugens. The taxonomic-to-phenotypic mapping revealed the presence of ammonia oxidizers, nitrogen fixers, sulfur oxidizers and reducers, xylan degraders, and aromatic hydrocarbon degraders in the metagenome of N. lugens. Interestingly, the IR population was found to be enriched with bacteria involved in detoxification functions. The results obtained in this study provide a basis for future studies elucidating the roles of the gut bacteria in the insecticide resistance-associated symbiotic relationship and on the design of novel strategies for the management of N. lugens.
Keywords: 16S rRNA; Gut bacterial community; Illumina Miseq; Nilaparvata lugens; deep sequencing; insecticide resistance.