Project description:Biological interactions, including symbiotic ones, have vital roles in ecological and evolutionary processes. Microbial symbionts in the intestinal tracts, known as the gut microbiome, are especially important because they can fundamentally influence the life history, fitness, and competitiveness of their hosts. Studies on the gut-resident microorganisms of wild animals focus mainly on vertebrates, and studies on species-rich invertebrate taxa, such as ground beetles, are sparse. In fact, even among the species-rich genus Carabus, only the gut microbiome of two Asian species was studied, while results on European species are completely missing. Here, we investigated the gut bacterial microbiome of a widespread European Carabus species, targeting the V3 and V4 regions of the 16S ribosomal RNA genes by next-generation high-throughput sequencing. We identified 1138 different operational taxonomic units assigned to 21 bacterial phyla, 90 families, and 197 genera. Members of the carbohydrate-degrading Prevotellaceae family, previously not detected in ground beetles, were the most abundant in the gut microbiome of the carnivorous C. convexus. Presumably, individuals from the studied wild populations also consume plant materials, especially fruits, and these carbohydrate-degrading bacterial symbionts can facilitate both the consumption and the digestion of these supplementary foods.
| S-EPMC11354712 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Gut bacterial microbiome of Carabus convexus
Project description:The complete mitochondrial genome of convex reef crab Carpilius convexus was determined and characterized for the first time from the South China Sea. The whole mitogenome is 15,766 bp long and consists of 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), and 1 control region. The nucleotide composition of the mitogenome is significantly biased (A, G, T, and C is 36.91%, 17.94%, 34.95%, and 10.19%, respectively) with A + T contents of 71.86%. All PCGs start with a normal initiation codon ATN and terminate with a standard stop codon except ND1 gene end with TTG. Five microsatellites are identified in C. convexus mitogenome sequences. The phylogenetic tree showed that C. convexus was first clustered with Carpilius maculatus, and strongly supports that the recognition of the Carpiliidae as a monophyletic family.
Project description:Urbanization is increasing worldwide and causes substantial changes in environmental parameters, generating various kinds of stress on arthropods, with several harmful consequences. We examined a forest specialist ground beetle, Carabus convexus, in forested habitats to evaluate the changes in four important life history traits between rural and urban populations. Analyzing beetles from the overwintered cohort in their first breeding season, we found no significant differences in body length or body mass between the rural and urban individuals. Body condition, judged by fat reserve scores, was similarly poor in both habitats, indicating that beetles were not able to accumulate substantial fat reserves at either habitat. Females with ripe eggs in their ovaries were first captured at the same time in both areas. The number of ripe eggs, however, was significantly higher in females of the low-density urban population (6.13 eggs/female) than in those of the high-density rural population (4.14 eggs/female), indicating density-dependent fecundity. Altered environmental and habitat conditions by urbanization, however, seemed to cause high mortality during egg hatching and/or larval development, preventing the growth of the urban population to the level of rural one.