Piccinno Riccardo, Galla Giulio, Roselli Gerardo, Rodeghiero Mirco, Mazzoni Valerio, Stringer Lloyd, Hauffe Heidi Christine, Anfora Gianfranco, Rota-Stabelli Omar
Center Agriculture Food Environment (C3A), University of Trento, Trento, Italy.
Department of Biology and Biotechnology "Lazzaro Spallanzani", University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
Environ Microbiol Rep. 2025 Jun;17(3):e70116. doi: 10.1111/1758-2229.70116.
Host-associated microbial communities play an important role in regulating many aspects of insect biology, but changes in this microbiota during diapause and overwintering are still largely unknown. Halyomorpha halys is an invasive agricultural pest characterised by a unique overwintering strategy where individuals aggregate and enter a state of dormancy, making it an excellent model to study the relationship between microbiota and diapause. We investigated the bacterial diversity of wild H. halys specimens before and after dormancy using 16S rRNA gene amplicon-sequencing. We found that microbiota varies between geographically neighbouring sampling locations, but there were no significant differences in microbial diversity or composition between populations sampled before and after diapause, despite stressful overwintering conditions. Such stability may relate to the highly specific taxa that dominate the stinkbug-associated microbial community. In addition, we did not detect any strong association of stink bugs with phytopathogens, but we found that two populations harboured Nosema maddoxi, a microsporidian pathogen of stink bugs. Our results are relevant to the assessment of accidental spillovers of microorganisms in newly invaded areas and to the implementation of the sterile insect technique based on mass trapping, irradiation, shipping and release after diapause of wild individuals.
宿主相关的微生物群落对昆虫生物学的诸多方面起着重要的调节作用，但滞育和越冬期间这种微生物群的变化仍很大程度上未知。褐飞蝽是一种入侵性农业害虫，具有独特的越冬策略，即个体聚集并进入休眠状态，这使其成为研究微生物群与滞育之间关系的绝佳模型。我们使用16S rRNA基因扩增子测序法调查了野生褐飞蝽标本在休眠前后的细菌多样性。我们发现，微生物群在地理上相邻的采样地点之间存在差异，但尽管越冬条件恶劣，滞育前后采样的种群在微生物多样性或组成上没有显著差异。这种稳定性可能与主导臭虫相关微生物群落的高度特异性分类群有关。此外，我们没有检测到臭虫与植物病原体之间有任何强关联，但我们发现两个种群携带了马多克斯微孢子虫，这是一种臭虫的微孢子虫病原体。我们的研究结果与评估新入侵地区微生物的意外溢出以及基于大规模诱捕、辐照、运输和野生个体滞育后释放的不育昆虫技术的实施有关。
