Bacterial but not protist gut microbiota align with ecological specialization in a set of lower termite species

Abstract

The role of microbes in adaptation of higher organisms to the environment is becoming increasingly evident, but remains poorly understood. Protist and bacterial microbes facilitate that lower termites thrive on wood and are directly involved in substrate break down. During the course of evolution lower termites adapted to different diets and lifestyles. In order to test whether there are changes of the termite gut microbiota that co-occur and hence could be related to diet and lifestyle adaptation, we assessed the bacterial and protist communities in a multispecies framework profiling three wood-dwelling and two foraging lower termite species using 16S and 18S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Termites were kept under controlled conditions on the same diet to minimize environmental effects on their gut microbiota. We found that protist communities group according to host phylogeny while bacterial communities group according to lifestyle. The change from the ancestral wood-dwelling to a foraging lifestyle coincides with exposure to more diverse and higher concentrations of pathogens as well as a more diverse diet. Accordingly, we identified bacteria that are associated with foraging termites of the genus Reticulitermes and could function as probiotics or be metabolically important on a more diverse diet. Furthermore, protist and bacterial diversity are correlated, suggesting not only that many termite gut bacteria are associated with protists, but also suggesting a role of protist diversity in the evolution of bacterial diversity in the termite gut or vice versa.