Microenvironment and bacterial community structure in the gut of wood- and litter-feeding cockroaches

While the gut microbiota of termites and its role in symbiotic digestion have been studied for decades, little is known about the bacteria colonizing the intestinal tract of detritivorous cockroaches. To improve the phylogenetic classification of short-read libraries, we first created a curated...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lampert, Niclas
Contributors: Brune, Andreas (Prof. Dr.) (Thesis advisor)
Format: Doctoral Thesis
Language:English
Published: Philipps-Universität Marburg 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:PDF Full Text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:While the gut microbiota of termites and its role in symbiotic digestion have been studied for decades, little is known about the bacteria colonizing the intestinal tract of detritivorous cockroaches. To improve the phylogenetic classification of short-read libraries, we first created a curated reference database of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene, based on the SILVA database and 1048 additional full-length 16S rRNA gene sequences from the intestinal tracts of 24 dictyopteran insects (chapter 2). The performance of the database in the classification of short-read libraries from termites and cockroaches was highly superior to that of the current SILVA and RDP databases. We then investigated the bacterial gut communities in the crop, midgut and hindgut of two xylophagous (chapter 3) and three litter-feeding (chapter 4) cockroaches by Illumina sequencing, and compared them to those in omnivorous cockroaches and termites, focusing on two main questions: First, if host diet determines the gut microbiota in cockroaches, and second, what role environmental variables play in different gut compartments. We found that the gut microbiotas of cockroaches share rare lineages and the phenomenon of gut compartment-specific communities with those of termites, but differ in community structure and show only little diet-specific distinction. In order to identify other potential drivers of microbial community structure in cockroach guts, we determined the intestinal physicochemical parameters pH, redox potential, and oxygen and hydrogen partial pressure. Surprisingly, the localization of intestinal hydrogen accumulation in the crop of two cockroach species differed from that in the posterior midgut observed previously for omnivorous species. Intestinal pH, in addition to other, yet unidentified factors, was a strong determinant of bacterial community structure, posing a strong selection pressure particularly in the hindgut compartment. For a better understanding of the digestion of lignocellulose by cockroaches in nature, I fed two cockroach species on oak leaf litter, and determined the degradation efficiency and metabolization rates of lignocellulosic fractions and carbohydrate monomers through controlled mass balances (chapter 5). I found that xylan rather than cellulose was degraded in the gut, suggesting that litter-feeding cockroaches preferentially degrade the easily solubilizable diet fractions like hemicelluloses.
Physical Description:157 Pages
DOI:10.17192/z2018.0081