Mosquito-associated bacterial communities source from diet and environmental substrates

dc.contributor.advisor Medeiros, Matthew C I
dc.contributor.author Weber, Danya
dc.contributor.department Zoology
dc.date.accessioned 2024-02-26T20:14:04Z
dc.date.available 2024-02-26T20:14:04Z
dc.date.issued 2023
dc.description.degree M.S.
dc.identifier.uri https://hdl.handle.net/10125/107907
dc.subject Microbiology
dc.subject assembly
dc.subject microbiome
dc.subject mosquito
dc.subject nestedness
dc.subject symbionts
dc.title Mosquito-associated bacterial communities source from diet and environmental substrates
dc.type Thesis
dcterms.abstract Symbiotic microorganisms are often critical for metazoan host biological functioning. Over life stages, hosts acquire symbionts from their environment, though the specific environmental sources of microbial symbionts in hosts remain largely understudied. Moreover, patterns of microbial community assembly from these environmental sources are inadequately described. Here, we utilize two mosquito species of public health and conservation concern in Hawaiʻi to test the hypothesis that host microbiomes are composed of subsets of microbes from a high diversity microbial community in the environment, and that hosts acquire these microbial symbionts through their diet. We also experimentally test the effects of the microbial environment and diet on mosquito microbiome assembly. Our field results demonstrate nestedness of mosquito symbionts within the microbial community of the mosquito diet and free-living environmental substrates. We observed partitioning of microbiome composition by host status, in which microbiome compositions are more similar between plant and animal hosts in contrast to free-living environmental substrates. Additionally, our laboratory experiment showed the re-establishment of several naturally-occurring symbiont taxa in lab-reared mosquitoes with exposure to microbial-rich natural substrates, as well as significant interaction effects of microbial source pools from larval rearing environment and adult nutritional resources on microbiome composition. Our results have implications toward understanding the microbial community assemblage and environmental sources of symbionts, which can not only answer fundamental questions related to the diversity of the host microbiome, but can also help to inform mosquito management to augment human health and conservation efforts.
dcterms.extent 48 pages
dcterms.language en
dcterms.publisher University of Hawai'i at Manoa
dcterms.rights All UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner.
dcterms.type Text
local.identifier.alturi http://dissertations.umi.com/hawii:11976
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