Université de Poitiers, UMR CNRS 7267, Ecologie et Biologie des Interactions, équipe Ecologie Evolution Symbiose, 5 rue Albert Turpin, 86073, Poitiers, France.
Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Via Ferrata 9, 27100, Pavia, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2018 May 3;8(1):6998. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-25450-4.
Wolbachia are widespread heritable endosymbionts of arthropods notorious for their profound effects on host fitness as well as for providing protection against viruses and eukaryotic parasites, indicating that they can interact with other microorganisms sharing the same host environment. Using the terrestrial isopod crustacean Armadillidium vulgare, its highly diverse microbiota (>200 bacterial genera) and its three feminizing Wolbachia strains (wVulC, wVulM, wVulP) as a model system, the present study demonstrates that Wolbachia can even influence the composition of a diverse bacterial community under both laboratory and natural conditions. While host origin is the major determinant of the taxonomic composition of the microbiota in A. vulgare, Wolbachia infection affected both the presence and, more importantly, the abundance of many bacterial taxa within each host population, possibly due to competitive interactions. Moreover, different Wolbachia strains had different impacts on microbiota composition. As such, infection with wVulC affected a higher number of taxa than infection with wVulM, possibly due to intrinsic differences in virulence and titer between these two strains. In conclusion, this study shows that heritable endosymbionts such as Wolbachia can act as biotic factors shaping the microbiota of arthropods, with as yet unknown consequences on host fitness.
沃尔巴克氏体是广泛存在于节肢动物体内的可遗传共生体，它们对宿主适应性有深远影响，同时还能提供对病毒和真核寄生虫的保护，这表明它们可以与其他在同一宿主环境中共享的微生物相互作用。本研究以陆生等足目甲壳动物粗糙龙虱（Armadillidium vulgare）为模型系统，其拥有高度多样化的微生物群落（>200 个细菌属）和三种致雌性化的沃尔巴克氏体菌株（wVulC、wVulM 和 wVulP），结果表明，沃尔巴克氏体甚至可以在实验室和自然条件下影响多样化细菌群落的组成。虽然宿主来源是粗糙龙虱微生物群落分类组成的主要决定因素，但沃尔巴克氏体感染影响了每个宿主群体中许多细菌类群的存在和更重要的是丰度，这可能是由于竞争相互作用所致。此外，不同的沃尔巴克氏体菌株对微生物群落组成有不同的影响。因此，与感染 wVulM 相比，感染 wVulC 会影响更多的分类群，这可能是由于这两种菌株之间内在的毒力和滴度差异所致。总之，本研究表明，像沃尔巴克氏体这样的可遗传内共生体可以作为塑造节肢动物微生物群落的生物因素，而这对宿主适应性的影响尚不清楚。
