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Author Spotlight: Sieving Fruit Pulp to Detect Immature Tephritid Fruit Flies in the Field
Published on: July 28, 2023
Instar- and host-associated differentiation of bacterial communities in the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis
Antonino Malacrinò1,2, Orlando Campolo2, Raul F Medina3
1Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.
Abstract:
Microorganisms are acknowledged for their role in shaping insects' evolution, life history and ecology. Previous studies have shown that microbial communities harbored within insects vary through ontogenetic development and among insects feeding on different host-plant species. In this study, we characterized the bacterial microbiota of the highly polyphagous Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae), at different instars and when feeding on different host-plant species. Our results show that the bacterial microbiota hosted within the Mediterranean fruit fly differs among instars and host-plant species. Most of the bacteria harbored by the Mediterranean fruit fly belong to the phylum Proteobacteria, including genera of Alphaproteobacteria such as Acetobacter and Gluconobacter; Betaprotobacteria such as Burkholderia and Gammaproteobacteria such as Pseudomonas.
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