Archaea, the unseen kingdom in the gut microbiome of Anastrepha obliqua

Abstract The fruit fly Anastrepha obliqua is an economically important pest. The sterile insect technique is used to control this pest; it involves mass production and release of sterile flies to reduce the reproduction of the wild population. As noted in different tephritidae, the performance of sterile males may be affected by the assimilation of nutrients under mass-rearing conditions. In the wild, the fly’s life cycle suggests the acquisition of different organisms that could modulate its fitness and physiology. For A. obliqua, there is no information regarding microorganisms other than bacteria. This study analyzed bacteria, fungi, and archaea communities in the A. obliqua gut through denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) profiles of 16S (using different set of primers for bacteria and archaea) and 18S ribosomal DNA markers. We found that wild flies presented higher microbial diversity than laboratory samples related to fructose assimilation. In contrast, laboratory microbial species suggest that microorganisms have led to a specialized metabolism to process nutrients associated to an artificial diet. We showed that by employing different primer sets aimed at the same molecular marker but targeting diverse hypervariable regions of bacteria and archaea 16S rDNA, it was possible to identify species that have not been previously described in this fruit fly. Here, the archaea kingdom is suggested as an important player in fly metabolism. This report of the intestinal microbial (bacteria, archaea, and fungi) composition of A. obliqua, contributes to our understanding of the role of microorganisms in the development and physiology of the flies.