Analysis of the influence of host plant, soil and beetle species on microbial diversity in Longitarsus flea beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae)

以植物为食的甲虫构成了地球上最丰富的生物群之一。草食性甲虫的爆炸性辐射很大程度上是由植物中防御化合物的进化驱动的。然而，关于与这些昆虫相关的微生物群落，或者它们如何影响甲虫的进化和对植物喂养的适应，人们知之甚少。基于跳甲属(鞘翅目：叶甲科)现有的系统发育，我们将使用高通量微生物群落测序和实验性宿主切换操作来探索微生物在食草性昆虫适应宿主植物中所起的作用。我们之前的结果证实了这些方法在确定昆虫微生物群落多样性方面是非常有效的。然而，他们没有讨论甲虫关系、环境(例如幼虫土壤栖息地)和寄主植物化学对肠道微生物区系组成的相对影响。在这里，我们建议对寄主植物重叠的两个专业型和一个通用型纵趾虫物种的寄主植物、土壤和种群效应进行详细的调查，以区分这些影响。这个项目将对微生物群落和它们的昆虫宿主之间的关系可能如何塑造草食性甲虫的进化多样性提供关键的洞察。

Plant-feeding beetles comprise one of the most abundant groups of organisms on Earth. The explosive radiation of herbivorous beetles has been driven largely by the evolution of defensive compounds in plants. Yet, little is known about the microbial communities associated with these insects or how they affect beetle evolution and adaptation to plant-feeding. Based on an existing phylogeny of the flea-beetle genus Longitarsus (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), we will use highthroughput microbial community sequencing, and experimental host-switching manipulation to explore the role microbes play in the adaptation of herbivorous insects to their host plants. Our previous results confirmed that the methods are highly effective at determining the insects' microbial community diversity. However, they left open the relative impact of the beetle relationship, the environment (e.g. larval soil habitat) and host plant chemistry on the composition of the gut microbiota. Here we propose a detailed investigation of host plant, soil and population effects in two specialist and one generalist Longitarsus species with overlapping host plants to differentiate among these effects. This project will lend critical insight into how the relationship between microbial communities and their insect hosts may have shaped the evolutionary diversification of herbivorous beetles.