A Shift Pattern of Bacterial Communities Across the Life Stages of the Citrus Red Mite, Panonychus citri

Zhen-Yu Zhang; Muhammad Waqar Ali; Hafiz Sohaib Ahmed Saqib; Sheng-Xuan Liu; Xin Yang; Qin Li; Hongyu Zhang

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.01620

A Shift Pattern of Bacterial Communities Across the Life Stages of the Citrus Red Mite, Panonychus citri

Front Microbiol. 2020 Jul 10:11:1620. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.01620. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Zhen-Yu Zhang¹, Muhammad Waqar Ali², Hafiz Sohaib Ahmed Saqib³, Sheng-Xuan Liu⁴, Xin Yang¹, Qin Li⁴, Hongyu Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology (MOE), Institute of Urban and Horticultural Entomology, College of Plant Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China.
² Institute of Fruit and Tea, Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wuhan, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Ecological Pest Control for Fujian and Taiwan Crops, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China.
⁴ College of Life Science, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China.

Abstract

As one of the most detrimental citrus pests worldwide, the citrus red mite, Panonychus citri (McGregor), shows extraordinary fecundity, polyphagia, and acaricide resistance, which may be influenced by microbes as other arthropod pests. However, the community structure and physiological function of microbes in P. citri are still largely unknown. Here, the high-throughput sequencing of 16S rDNA amplicons was employed to identify and compare the profile of bacterial communities across the larva, protonymph, deutonymph, and adult stages of P. citri. We observed a dominance of phylums Proteobacteria and Firmicutes, and classes α-, γ-, β-Proteobacteria and Bacilli in the bacterial communities across the host lifespan. Based on the dynamic analysis of the bacterial community structure, a significant shift pattern between the immature (larva, protonymph, and deutonymph) and adult stages was observed. Accordingly, among the major families (and corresponding genera), although the relative abundances of Pseudomonadaceae (Pseudomonas), Moraxellaceae (Acinetobacter), and Sphingobacteriaceae (Sphingobacterium) were consistent in larva to deutonymph stages, they were significantly increased to 30.18 ± 8.76% (30.16 ± 8.75%), 20.78 ± 10.86% (18.80 ± 10.84%), and 11.71 ± 5.49% (11.68 ± 5.48%), respectively, in adult stage, which implied the important function of these bacteria on the adults' physiology. Actually, the functional prediction of bacterial communities and Spearman correlation analysis further confirm that these bacteria had positively correlations with the pathway of "lipid metabolism" (including eight sublevel pathways) and "metabolism of cofactors and vitamins" (including five sublevel pathways), which all only increased in adult stages. In addition, the bacterial communities were eliminated by using broad-spectrum antibiotics, streptomycin, which significantly suppressed the survival and oviposition of P. citri. Overall, we not only confirmed the physiological effects of bacteria community on the vitality and fecundity of adult hosts, but also revealed the shift pattern of bacterial community structures across the life stages and demonstrated the co-enhancements of specific bacterial groups and bacterial functions in nutritional metabolism in P. citri. This study sheds light on basic information about the mutualism between spider mites and bacteria, which may be useful in shaping the next generation of control strategies for spider mite pests, especially P. citri.

Keywords: 16S rDNA amplicon pyrosequencing; Panonychus citri (McGregor); bacterial metabolism; developmental stages; dynamics of bacterial community; spider mites.