Diet effects on gut and reproductive structure microbiome in Bactrocera dorsalis
Bacterial symbionts are crucial to the life history of Bactrocera dorsalis. With larval diet (i.e., fruit host) being a key factor that determines microbiome composition and with B. dorsalis using more than 400 fruits as hosts, it is unclear if certain bacterial symbionts are preserved and are passed on to B. dorsalis progenies across changes in larval diet. Here, we conducted a fly rearing experiment to characterize diet-induced changes in the microbiome of female B. dorsalis. In order to explicitly investigate the impacts of larval diet on the microbiome, including potential stable bacterial constituents of B. dorsalis, we performed 16S rRNA sequencing on the gut tissues of teneral female flies reared from 4 different host fruits (guava, mango, papaya, and rose-apple) infested using a single cohort of wild B. dorsalis that emerged from tropical almond (mother flies).