Gut flora alterations among aquatic firefly Aquatica leii inhabiting various dissolved oxygen in fresh water

Zi-Shun Zhao; Lin-Yu Yang; Fu-Xin Li; Wei Cun; Xing-Yan Wang; Cheng-Quan Cao; Qi-Lin Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.107809

Gut flora alterations among aquatic firefly Aquatica leii inhabiting various dissolved oxygen in fresh water

iScience. 2023 Sep 1;26(10):107809. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107809. eCollection 2023 Oct 20.

Authors

Zi-Shun Zhao¹, Lin-Yu Yang¹, Fu-Xin Li¹, Wei Cun¹, Xing-Yan Wang¹, Cheng-Quan Cao², Qi-Lin Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Life Science and Technology, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, China.
² College of Life Sciences, Leshan Normal University, Leshan, Sichuan 614004, China.

Abstract

Knowledge about the impact of different dissolved oxygen (DO) on the composition and function of gut bacteria of aquatic insects is largely unknown. Herein, we constructed freshwater environments with different DOs (hypoxia: 2.50 ± 0.50, normoxia: 7.00 ± 0.50, and hyperoxia: 13.00 ± 0.50 mg/L) where aquatic firefly Aquatica leii larvae lived for three months. Their gut flora was analyzed using the combination of 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and metagenomics. The results showed no difference in alpha diversity of the gut flora between A. leii inhabiting various DOs. However, the relative abundance of several bacterial lineages presented significant changes, such as Pseudomonas. In addition, bacterial genes with an altered relative abundance in response to various DOs were primarily related to metabolism. The alteration of these functions correlated with the DO change. This is the first to uncover structure of gut flora under various DOs in aquatic insect larvae.

Keywords: Aquatic science; Environment; Microbiome.