Interaction with refuse piles drives co-occurrence of core gut microbiota in Aphaenogaster picea workers

Investigations into bacterial community composition of eusocial insect microbiota provide a greater understanding of the relationship between insect hosts and their core symbionts. Comparing gut microbiota diversity between and within different insect colonies presents a dynamic model for studying how bacterial community composition may affect or be affected by host behavior. In many social insect species, various workers perform different behaviors. Thus, these workers may benefit from symbiotic relationships with certain bacteria that augment the metabolic processes underlying those behaviors. Evidence of compositional differences between core microbiota in different worker types could suggest a microbial association with division of labor among workers. This study focuses on Aphaenogaster picea ants. The genus Aphaenogaster is abundant worldwide, yet the associated microbiota of this group is unstudied. Bacterial communities from A. picea 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 A. picea gut bacterial communities in workers with greater interaction with 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. Interaction with fecal matter via refuse piles seems to have the greatest impact on taxa distribution, and this effect appears to be independent of worker type. This is the first report surveying gut microbiome community composition of Aphaenogaster ants.

Author

• Pagalilauan, Alison

Language

• en

Keyword

• eusociality
• gut microbiome
• Aphaenogaster
• 16S rRNA sequencing

Date created

• 2022

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Biological Sciences

Degree

• M.S.

Advisor

• Smith, Adam
• Saw, Jimmy

Committee Member(s)

• Powell, Scott

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/h702q722c