Malacrinò Antonino
Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany.
Mol Ecol. 2022 Feb;31(3):723-735. doi: 10.1111/mec.16285. Epub 2021 Dec 2.
As for most of the life that inhabits our planet, microorganisms play an essential role in insect nutrition, reproduction, defence, and support their host in many other functions. More recently, we assisted to an exponential growth of studies describing the taxonomical composition of bacterial communities across insects' phylogeny. However, there is still an outstanding question that needs to be answered: Which factors contribute most to shape insects' microbiomes? This study tries to find an answer to this question by taking advantage of publicly available sequencing data and reanalysing over 4000 samples of insect-associated bacterial communities under a common framework. Results suggest that insect taxonomy has a wider impact on the structure and diversity of their associated microbial communities than the other factors considered (diet, sex, life stage, sample origin and treatment). However, when specifically testing for signatures of codiversification of insect species and their microbiota, analyses found weak support for this, suggesting that while insect species strongly drive the structure and diversity of insect microbiota, the diversification of those microbial communities did not follow their host's phylogeny. Furthermore, a parallel survey of the literature highlights several methodological limitations that need to be considered in the future research endeavours.
对于地球上大多数生物而言，微生物在昆虫的营养、繁殖、防御方面发挥着至关重要的作用，并在许多其他功能中支持其宿主。最近，我们看到描述昆虫系统发育中细菌群落分类组成的研究呈指数级增长。然而，仍有一个悬而未决的问题有待解答：哪些因素对塑造昆虫的微生物群贡献最大？本研究试图通过利用公开可用的测序数据，并在一个共同框架下重新分析4000多个与昆虫相关的细菌群落样本，来找到这个问题的答案。结果表明，与其他考虑因素（饮食、性别、生命阶段、样本来源和处理）相比，昆虫分类学对其相关微生物群落的结构和多样性影响更大。然而，在专门测试昆虫物种与其微生物群共同多样化的特征时，分析发现对此支持力度较弱，这表明虽然昆虫物种强烈驱动昆虫微生物群的结构和多样性，但这些微生物群落的多样化并未遵循其宿主的系统发育。此外，对文献的平行调查突出了未来研究工作中需要考虑的几个方法学局限性。
