Abstract
Salinization of coastal freshwaters (FWs) due to sea-level rise is a significant stressor for FW biodiversity. However, the effect of changes in salinity on the bacterial microbiome of Neotropical FW insects is less known. We combined field collections and common garden experiments to assess how changes in salinity may affect the microbiome associated with fresh and brackish populations of the water strider Telmatometra withei in Panama. The brackish water (BW) population had higher bacterial diversity and the total communities associated with T. withei were different at each site. Common garden experiments showed that both β diversity and the relative abundance of key taxa varied significantly with changes in salinity, but α diversity remained constant. The BW treatments also showed increased diversity of taxa known to be pathogenic to both insects and humans, including Mycobacterium, Spiroplasma, and Vibrio. Our findings suggest that the host environment is an essential driver of host–microbiome interactions in T. withei. Given the expected increases in sea-level rise, salinity-driven changes in the microbiomes of aquatic insects could trigger important ecological, evolutionary, and pathogenic changes, with consequences for both natural and human populations.
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Data availability
Raw sequence data and metadata are available at: https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Salinity_effects_on_the_microbiome_of_a_Neotropical_water_strider/14676510. Raw sequence are available at: https://www.mg-rast.org/mgmain.html?mgpage=token&token=rxUJmwxaxo1J0pNV24Gw0VuP9JugUrnF1K.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Eyda Gómez and Marta Vargas Timchenko for logistical support in the STRI Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics Laboratory.
Funding
This work was supported by the Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (SENACYT, Panamá) in the form of a Doctoral Fellowship to A.M.C. (No. 270-2013-284) and a Research Grant (No. FID16-116) to L.F.D. Additional support was provided by Instituto para la Formación y Aprovechamiento de los Recursos Humanos in the form of a Doctoral Fellowship to A.M.C. A.M.C. and L.C.M. acknowledge support from the Sistema Nacional de Investigación (SNI, Panamá). L.F.D. is supported by the University of Massachusetts Boston and K.S. received support from the Simons Foundation (Grant 429440 to W. Wcislo, P.I.).
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Conceptualization AMC and LFD; formal analysis AMC, KAC, and KS; methodology AMC; investigation AMC, LFD, KAC, KS, CFA, and LCM; writing—review and editing AMC, LFD, KAC, KS, CFA, and LCM; funding acquisition LFD. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Supplementary file1 (PDF 42 kb) Fig. S1 Rarefaction curves of bacterial phylogenetic diversity (based on Faith’s PD, ± SE) associated with T. withei from two field sites (A) and common garden experiments (B)
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Supplementary file2 (PDF 90 kb) Fig. S2 Relative abundance of the most common bacteria taxa associated with T. withei in common garden experiments (salinity treatments 0 to 5 ppt). Abundance was estimated at the rank of bacterial class (A), as well as at the rank of genus (B). α Diversity was estimated based on Faith’s phylogenetic diversity for each site (C). FW and BW in upper part represent both FW and BW origin
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Castillo, A.M., Chavarria, K.A., Saltonstall, K. et al. Salinity effects on the microbiome of a Neotropical water strider. Hydrobiologia 850, 3705–3717 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-021-04732-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-021-04732-5