Gut microbial composition in developmental stages of gall inducing thrips and associated plant pathogenesis.

Gut bacteria play a crucial role in the several metabolic activity of the insects. In the present work, effort has been made to decipher the gut microbiota associated with the developmental stages of a gall inducing thrips along with their predicted functional role. Further, an effort has been made to correlate the bacterial communities with plant pathogenesis and thelytoky behaviour of . Findings obtained revealed that genus dominated the total bacterial diversity and was transmitted vertically through the developmental stages. Further, it was observed that the high abundance of genus promotes the thelytoky behaviour in and results in the killing of males. Furthermore, strong connecting link between abundance and gall induction in was observed in the current dataset. . being in the category of phloem sucking insect was known for the induction of galls and the current findings for the first time unveiled the facts that high abundance of genus a well-known plant pathogen may be one of the major reason for inducing galls in . Moreover, PICRUSt2 analysis revealed that predicted functional pathways like biosynthesis of amino acids, and metabolism of carbon, nitrogen, carbohydrates and amino acids (e.g. Arginine, Alanine, Aspartate, Glutamate, Proline, Cysteine, Methionine, Glycine, Threonine, and Serine) were frequently noticed in profiles associated with all the developmental stages of . . More to this, the high abundance of in . suggest that representatives of this genus may be resistant and/or tolerant to different antibacterial agents, alkaloids, flavonoids, and glycosides (e.g. quercetin). The correlation of bacterial diversity in pathogenicity can be extrapolated in different pest and vector species of other arthropods.