Species-specific diversity of novel bacterial lineages and differential abundance of predicted pathways for toxic compound degradation in scorpion gut microbiota.

Scorpions are considered 'living fossils' that have conserved ancestral anatomical features and have adapted to numerous habitats. However, their gut microbiota diversity has not been studied. Here, we characterized the gut microbiota of two scorpion species, Vaejovis smithi and Centruroides limpidus. Our results indicate that scorpion gut microbiota is species-specific and that food deprivation reduces bacterial diversity. 16S rRNA gene phylogenetic analysis revealed novel bacterial lineages showing a low level of sequence identity to any known bacteria. Furthermore, these novel bacterial lineages were each restricted to a different scorpion species. Additionally, our results of the predicted metagenomic profiles revealed a core set of pathways that were highly abundant in both species, and mostly related to amino acid, carbohydrate, vitamin and cofactor metabolism. Notably, the food-deprived V. smithi shotgun metagenome matched almost completely the metabolic features of the prediction. Finally, comparisons among predicted metagenomic profiles showed that toxic compound degradation pathways were more abundant in recently captured C. limpidus scorpions. This study gives a first insight into the scorpion gut microbiota and provides a reference for future studies on the gut microbiota from other arachnid species.