Pagalilauan Alison, Pavloudi Christina, Ospina Santiago Meneses, Smith Adam, Saw Jimmy H
Department of Biological Sciences, The George Washington University, Washington DC 20052, USA.
European Marine Biological Resource Centre-European Research Infrastructure Consortium (EMBRC-ERIC), Paris, France.
Access Microbiol. 2025 Jan 30;7(1). doi: 10.1099/acmi.0.000832.v4. eCollection 2025.
Comparing the diversity of gut microbiota between and within social insect colonies can illustrate interactions between bacterial community composition and host behaviour. In many eusocial insect species, different workers exhibit different task behaviours. Evidence of compositional differences between core microbiota in different worker types could suggest a microbial association with the division of labour among workers. Here, we present the core microbiota of ant workers with different task behaviours. The genus is abundant worldwide, yet the associated microbiota of this group is unstudied. Bacterial communities from gut samples in this study consist of 19 phyla, dominated by Proteobacteria, Cyanobacteria and Firmicutes. Analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences reveals distinct similarity clustering of gut bacterial communities in workers that have more interactions with the refuse piles. Though gut bacterial communities of nurse and foraging ants are similar in overall composition and structure, the worker groups differ in relative abundances of dominant taxa. Gut bacterial communities from ants that have more interactions with refuse piles are dominated by amplicon sequence variants associated with Entomoplasmataceae. Interaction with faecal matter via refuse piles seems to have the greatest impact on microbial taxa distribution, and this effect appears to be independent of worker type. This is the first report surveying the gut microbiome community composition of ants.
比较社会性昆虫群落之间以及群落内部肠道微生物群的多样性，可以阐明细菌群落组成与宿主行为之间的相互作用。在许多群居性昆虫物种中，不同的工蚁表现出不同的任务行为。不同类型工蚁的核心微生物群之间存在组成差异的证据，可能表明微生物与工蚁之间的劳动分工有关。在此，我们展示了具有不同任务行为的蚂蚁工蚁的核心微生物群。该属在全球范围内分布广泛，但其相关的微生物群尚未得到研究。本研究中来自蚂蚁肠道样本的细菌群落由19个门组成，以变形菌门、蓝细菌门和厚壁菌门为主。对16S rRNA基因序列的分析揭示，与垃圾场有更多互动的工蚁肠道细菌群落存在明显的相似性聚类。尽管保育蚁和觅食蚁的肠道细菌群落在总体组成和结构上相似，但不同工蚁群体中优势类群的相对丰度有所不同。与垃圾场有更多互动的蚂蚁的肠道细菌群落以与昆虫支原体科相关的扩增子序列变体为主。通过垃圾场与粪便物质的相互作用似乎对微生物类群分布影响最大，而且这种影响似乎与工蚁类型无关。这是首篇对蚂蚁肠道微生物群落组成进行调查的报告。
