Microbiome turnover during offspring development varies with maternal care, but not moult, in a hemimetabolous insectuse asterix (*) to get italics

Marie-Charlotte Cheutin, Manon Boucicot, Joel MeunierPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2024

<p>The ecological success of insects often depends on their association with beneficial microbes. However, insect development involves repeated moults, which can have dramatic effects on their microbial communities. Here, we investigated whether and how moulting affects the microbiome of a hemimetabolous insect, and whether maternal care can modulate these effects. We reared European earwig juveniles with or without mothers and used 16S rRNA metabarcoding to analyse the prokaryotic fraction of the core microbiome of eggs, recently and old moulted individuals at four developmental stages and the resulting adults. The 218 samples obtained showed that the microbiome diversity changed non-linearly during development and that these changes were associated with bacterial biomarkers. Surprisingly, these changes did not occur during moulting, but rather between the beginning and end of certain developmental stages. We also found that access to maternal care affected the microbiome of both juveniles and adults, even when the last contact with mothers was two months before adulthood. Overall, these results provide new insights into our understanding of the (in)stability of the prokaryotic microbiome in hemimetabolous insects and its independence from moult. More generally, they question the role of microbiome acquisition through maternal care in maintaining family life in species where this behaviour is facultative.</p>

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12664472You should fill this box only if you chose 'All or part of the results presented in this preprint are based on data'. URL must start with http:// or https://

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12664472You should fill this box only if you chose 'Scripts were used to obtain or analyze the results'. URL must start with http:// or https://

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Microbiome, Horizontal transmission, Vertical transmission, Metamorphosis, Sociality

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Microbial ecology and environmental microbiology, Microbial physiology, ecophysiology and metabolism, Microbiomes

KORMAS Konstantinos Kostas : kkormas@uth.gr, MINARD Guillaume: guillaume.minard@univ-lyon1.fr, FRAGO Enric: enric.frago@cirad.fr, POMMIER Thomas: thomas.pommier@univ-lyon1.fr, POLLET Thomas : thomas.pollet@inrae.fr, ROBINET Tony : tony.robinet@mnhn.fr, Enric Frago suggested: Ailsa McLean: ailsa.mclean@biology.ox.ac.uk, Piotr Lukasik: p.lukasik@gmail.com No need for them to be recommenders of PCIMicrobiol. Please do not suggest reviewers for whom there might be a conflict of interest. Reviewers are not allowed to review preprints written by close colleagues (with whom they have published in the last four years, with whom they have received joint funding in the last four years, or with whom they are currently writing a manuscript, or submitting a grant proposal), or by family members, friends, or anyone for whom bias might affect the nature of the review - see the code of conduct

2024-03-28 12:24:50

Konstantinos (Kostas) Kormas