Microorganisms provide many physiological functions to herbivorous hosts. Spider mites (genus Tetranychus) are important agricultural pests throughout the world; however, the composition of the spider mite microbial community, especially gut microbiome, remains unclear. Here, we investigated the bacterial community in five spider mite species and their associated feces by deep sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. The composition of the bacterial community was significantly different among the five prevalent spider mite species, and some bacterial symbionts showed host‐species specificity. Moreover, the abundance of the bacterial community in spider mite feces was significantly higher than that in the corresponding spider mite samples. However, Flavobacterium was detected in all samples, and represent a “core microbiome”. Remarkably, the maternally inherited endosymbiont Wolbachia was detected in both spider mite and feces. Overall, these results offer insight into the complex community of symbionts in spider mites, and give a new direction for future studies.

中文翻译：

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红蜘蛛粪便中的微生物群可能反映宿主的肠道细菌群落

微生物为食草宿主提供许多生理功能。叶螨（Tetranychus）是全世界重要的农业害虫。然而，红蜘蛛微生物群落的组成，尤其是肠道微生物组，仍不清楚。在这里，我们通过 16S rRNA 基因的深度测序研究了五种蜘蛛螨及其相关粪便中的细菌群落。五种常见叶螨物种的细菌群落组成存在显着差异，一些细菌共生体表现出宿主物种特异性。此外，红蜘蛛粪便中细菌群落的丰度显着高于相应的红蜘蛛样本。然而，在所有样本中都检测到黄杆菌，代表了“核心微生物组”。值得注意的是，在红蜘蛛和粪便中都检测到了母系遗传的内共生体沃尔巴克氏体。总的来说，这些结果提供了对蜘蛛螨共生体复杂群落的洞察，并为未来的研究提供了新的方向。