Nain Deepak, Rana Anjali, Raychoudhury Rhitoban, Sen Ruchira
Department of Zoology, Panjab University, Sector-14, Chandigarh, India, 160014.
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER Mohali), SAS Nagar, Knowledge City, Sector 81, Mohali, Punjab, India, 140306.
Microb Ecol. 2025 Mar 27;88(1):20. doi: 10.1007/s00248-025-02517-0.
The study of microbiota of social insects under different ecological conditions can provide important insights into the role of microbes in their biology and behavior. Polistes is one of the most widely distributed and extensively studied genera of social wasps, yet a comprehensive study on the microbiota of any species of Polistes or any primitively eusocial wasp is missing. Polistes wattii is an Asian wasp, which hibernates in winter and exhibits a biannual nest founding strategy. It is often parasitized by the strepsipteran endoparasite/parasitoid Xenos gadagkari, which changes the morpho-physiology and behavior of their hosts. In this study, we employ 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, using the Oxford Nanopore platform, to study the microbial community of P. wattii and investigate the effects of seasonality, sex, and Xenos parasitism. We show that the microbiota differs in females from solitary foundress spring nests and multiple foundress summer nests. The microbiota also differs in males and females. Finally, we show that X. gadagkari parasitism replaces and homogenizes the microbiota of P. wattii. Unlike the unparasitized wasps, the microbiota of X. gadagkari parasitoids and parasitized wasps are dominated by Wolbachia and Providencia. Although the normal microbiota of P. wattii resembles that of highly eusocial vespid wasps, we show that the microbiota of parasitized P. wattii becomes more like the microbiota of strepsipterans. Therefore, it appears that X. gadagkari and other such strepsipteran parasitoids may have a bigger impact on the biology of their hosts than previously thought.
对不同生态条件下社会性昆虫微生物群的研究，可以为微生物在其生物学和行为中的作用提供重要见解。黄胡蜂属是分布最广、研究最深入的社会性黄蜂属之一，但目前还缺乏对任何一种黄胡蜂或任何原始真社会性黄蜂微生物群的全面研究。瓦氏黄胡蜂是一种亚洲黄蜂，冬季冬眠，采用两年一次的建巢策略。它经常被捻翅目内寄生蜂/拟寄生蜂加德卡氏异捻翅虫寄生，这种寄生会改变宿主的形态生理学和行为。在本研究中，我们使用牛津纳米孔平台，通过16S rRNA扩增子测序来研究瓦氏黄胡蜂的微生物群落，并调查季节性、性别和异捻翅虫寄生的影响。我们发现，独居雌蜂春季巢穴和多雌蜂夏季巢穴中的雌性微生物群不同。雄性和雌性的微生物群也存在差异。最后，我们发现加德卡氏异捻翅虫寄生会取代并使瓦氏黄胡蜂的微生物群同质化。与未被寄生的黄蜂不同，加德卡氏异捻翅虫寄生蜂和被寄生黄蜂的微生物群以沃尔巴克氏体属和普罗威登斯菌属为主。虽然瓦氏黄胡蜂的正常微生物群与高度真社会性胡蜂的相似，但我们发现，被寄生的瓦氏黄胡蜂的微生物群变得更像捻翅目的微生物群。因此，加德卡氏异捻翅虫和其他此类捻翅目寄生蜂对宿主生物学的影响可能比之前认为的更大。
