Microbiome-dependent modulation of oviposition and attraction of the horticultural pest Drosophila suzukii by its sister species Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) or Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) is a fruit fly species native to Southeast Asia that is an invasive pest in other parts of the world. SWD integrated pest management research has focused on various aspects of control in vulnerable fruits, including chemical, physical, cultural and biological control. In this study we examined the deterrence of SWD egg laying by pre-exposure of egg laying substrates to the sister species DrosophilaDrosophila  melanogaster. Experiments using D. melanogaster cultures raised in the presence of antibiotics or following dechorionation (by treating D. melanogaster’s eggs with 5% bleach) showed this interspecies deterrent signal was elicited by the bacterial microbiome of D. melanogaster. Notably, we identified an alternative laboratory D. melanogaster line, DTS100, that possessed a bacterial microbiome that attracted rather than repelled subsequent SWD oviposition. Metagenomic analysis revealed that the relative abundance of the intracellular endosymbiotic bacteria Wolbachia pipientis was higher in the microbiome of repellent lines when compared to the attractive DTS100 line. Conversely, the relative abundance of Acetobacter bacteria was higher in the microbiome of the attractive versus the repellent D. melanogaster lines. We identified lactic acid as metabolite that was avoided by D. suzukii females in oviposition substrates relative to propionic acid, while acetic acid and gluconic acid were not distinguished from propionic acid. Our analyses have, thus, identified the presence of both attractive and repellent interspecies signals of microbial nature that may be further specified in future work to allow them to be incorporated in integrated pest management of D. suzukii.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Fardina Rahimi: orcid.org/0009-0001-0761-123X

ORCID for Herman Wijnen: orcid.org/0000-0002-8710-5176

Catalogue record

Export record