Characterization of the Tissue and Strain-Specific Microbiota of Anopheles funestus Giles (Diptera: Culicidae)

Abstract

The mosquito microbiota is a critical determinant of mosquito life history. It is therefore a target for novel vector control strategies like paratransgenesis. However, the microbiota in <i>Anopheles funestus</i>, a major African malaria vector, is poorly characterized. Thus, the study aimed to investigate the overall bacterial landscape in the salivary glands, ovaries and midguts of three laboratory strains of <i>An. funestus</i> differing in insecticide-resistant phenotype by sequencing the V3-V4 hypervariable region of bacterial 16S rRNA genes. When examining alpha diversity, the salivary glands harbored significantly more bacteria in terms of species richness and evenness compared to ovaries and midguts. On the strain level, the insecticide-susceptible FANG strain had significantly lower bacterial diversity than the insecticide-resistant FUMOZ and FUMOZ-R strains. When looking at beta diversity, the compositions of microbiota between the three tissues as well as between the strains were statistically different. While there were common bacteria across all three tissues and strains of interest, each tissue and strain did exhibit differentially abundant bacterial genera. However, overall, the top five most abundant genera across all tissues and strains were <i>Elizabethkingia</i>, <i>Acinetobacter</i>, <i>Aeromonas</i>, <i>Cedecea</i> and <i>Yersinia</i>. The presence of shared microbiota suggests a core microbiota that could be exploited for paratransgenesis efforts.