Microbial Community Composition Reveals Spatial Variation and Distinctive Core Microbiome of the Weaver Ant Oecophylla smaragdina in Malaysia.

ABSTRACT: The weaver ant Oecophylla smaragdina is an aggressive predator of other arthropods and has been employed as a biological control agent against many insect pests in plantations. Despite playing important roles in pest management, information about the microbiota of O. smaragdina is limited. In this work, a number of O. smaragdina colonies (n = 12) from Malaysia had been studied on their microbiome profile using Illumina 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. We characterized the core microbiota associated with these O. smaragdina and investigated variation between colonies from different environments. Across all 12 samples, 97.8% of the sequences were assigned to eight bacterial families and most communities were dominated by families Acetobacteraceae and Lactobacillaceae. Comparison among colo

SUBMITTER: Chua KO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6050294 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature