Department of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, University of Ostrava , Ostrava, Czechia.
Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Palacký University , Olomouc, Czechia.
Microbiol Spectr. 2024 Jan 11;12(1):e0299423. doi: 10.1128/spectrum.02994-23. Epub 2023 Nov 22.
The caterpillar gut is an excellent model system for studying host-microbiome interactions, as it represents an extreme environment for microbial life that usually has low diversity and considerable variability in community composition. Our study design combines feeding caterpillars on a natural and artificial diet with controlled levels of plant secondary metabolites and uses metabarcoding and quantitative PCR to simultaneously profile bacterial and fungal assemblages, which has never been performed. Moreover, we focus on multiple caterpillar species and consider diet breadth. Contrary to many previous studies, our study suggested the functional importance of certain microbial taxa, especially bacteria, and confirmed the previously proposed lower importance of fungi for caterpillar holobiont. Our study revealed the lack of differences between monophagous and polyphagous species in the responses of microbial assemblages to plant secondary metabolites, suggesting the limited role of the microbiome in the plasticity of the herbivore diet.
毛毛虫肠道是研究宿主-微生物组相互作用的极佳模型系统，因为它代表了微生物生活的极端环境，通常微生物多样性低，群落组成变化大。我们的研究设计结合了给毛毛虫喂食天然和人工饲料，并控制植物次生代谢物的水平，同时使用代谢组学和定量 PCR 来同时分析细菌和真菌的组合，这是以前从未进行过的。此外，我们专注于多种毛毛虫物种并考虑饮食广度。与许多先前的研究不同，我们的研究表明某些微生物类群（尤其是细菌）的功能重要性，并证实了先前提出的真菌对毛毛虫整体生物群的重要性较低。我们的研究表明，在微生物群落对植物次生代谢物的反应方面，单食性和多食性物种之间没有差异，这表明微生物组在食草动物饮食的可塑性中作用有限。
