bachelorThesis
Exploring the abdominal microbiome of two Heliconius species in the Central Colombian Andes
Autor
Salazar-Sastoque, Maria Paula
Institución
Resumen
Gut microbial communities have important roles in reproduction, digestion, and pathogen protection of their insect hosts. Given the importance of these endosymbiotic communities to their host, research on the diversity and ecology of microbiomes is receiving increasing attention. I wanted to test the relative importance of host species and geography in shaping microbiome composition. Using the V4 region of the 16S gene, we compared microbiome communities of two species of butterflies across two geographic locations. I used 14 individuals from two species, Heliconius cydno and Heliconius clysonymus, from forest reserves in Manizales, Caldas and Filandia, Quindío, in the Central Range of the Colombian Andes. Alpha diversity indices, including Shannon and Inverse Simpson, demonstrated similar amounts of taxonomic diversity across species and sites but with changes in abundance between butterfly species. Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA) of the microbial communities of individuals showed that the variability in microbiomes was decoupled from species identity and site. Proteobacteria was the most abundant phylum across all samples and Commensalibacter was the most common bacterial genus. In addition, we found the presence of intracellular symbiont Spiroplasma and Wolbachia in our samples.