Bacterial communities of the cotton aphid Aphis gossypii associated with Bt cotton in northern China

Abstract

Aphids are infected with a wide variety of endosymbionts that can confer ecologically relevant traits. However, the bacterial communities of most aphid species are still poorly characterized. This study investigated the bacterial diversity of the cotton aphid Aphis gossypii associated with Bt cotton in northern China by targeting the V4 region of the 16S rDNA using the Illumina MiSeq platform. Our sequencing data revealed that bacterial communities of A. gossypii were generally dominated by the primary symbiont Buchnera, together with the facultative symbionts Arsenophonus and Hamiltonella. To our knowledge, this is the first report documenting the facultative symbiont Hamiltonella in A. gossypii. Moreover, the bacterial community structure was similar within aphids from the same province, but distinct among those from different provinces. The taxonomic diversity of the bacterial community is greater in Hebei Province compared with in samples from Henan and Shandong Provinces. The selection pressure exerted by the different geographical locations could explain the differences found among the various provinces. These findings broaden our understanding of the interactions among aphids, endosymbionts and their environments, and provide clues to develop potential biocontrol techniques against this cotton aphid.

Figure 1. Heat maps showing the relative abundance and distribution of A. gossypii bacterial family in three provinces of northern China.

The color code indicates relative abundance, ranging from blue (low abundance) to yellow to red (high abundance).

Figure 2. Comparison of bacterial community structures in A. gossypii samples in three provinces of northern China.

Unweighted and weighted UniFrac metrics were used to determine pairwise distances between all samples.

Figure 3. Sampling locations of A. gossypii in three provinces of northern China.

Henan Province: Zhoukou(Zk), Xuchang(Xc), Shangqiu(Sq). Hebei Province: Cangzhou(Cz), Hengshui(Hs), Handan(Hd). Shandong Province: Jining(Jn), Bingzhou(Bz), Heze(Hz), Dezhou(Dz). The map is created with ArcGIS 10.2 (http://www.arcgis.com/features/).