Inter subfamily comparison of gut microbial diversity in twelve wild
spider species of family Araneidae
Abstract
Spiders are among the most diverse groups of arthropods remarkably known
for extra oral digestion. The largest effort based on targeted 16S
amplicon next generation sequencing was carried out to decipher the
inter subfamily comparison of gut bacterial diversity in spiders and
their functional relationship. Twelve spider species belonging to three
subfamilies, Araneinae (8), Argiopinae (2) and Gasteracanthinae (2) of
family Araneidae have been studied. Analysis revealed the presence of 22
phyla, 145 families, and 364 genera of microbes in the gut microbiome,
with Proteobacteria as the highest abundant Phylum. Moreover, the phyla
Firmicutes, Actinobacteria and Deinococcus_Thermus were also detected.
The bacterial phyla Bacteriodetes and Chlamydiae dominated in Cyclosa
mulmeinensis and Neoscona bengalensis respectively. At genera level,
Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, Cutibacterium, Staphylococcus, and Bacillus
were the most dominant genera in their gut. In addition to this, the
genus Prevotella was observed only in one species, Cyclosa mulmeinensis,
and endosymbiont genus Wolbachia generally responsible for reproductive
alterations was observed in one spider species Eriovixia laglaizei. Our
study revealed that the gut bacterial diversity of the spiders collected
from wild are quite different from the diet driven spider gut bacterial
diversity as published earlier. A functional analysis revealed the
involvement of gut microbiota in carbohydrate, lipid, amino acids, fatty
acids and energy metabolism.