Bacterial Community Diversity Harboured by Interacting Species.

All animals are infected by microbial partners that can be passengers or residents and influence many biological traits of their hosts. Even if important factors that structure the composition and abundance of microbial communities within and among host individuals have been recently described, such as diet, developmental stage or phylogeny, few studies have conducted cross-taxonomic comparisons, especially on host species related by trophic relationships. Here, we describe and compare the microbial communities associated with the cabbage root fly Delia radicum and its three major parasitoids: the two staphylinid beetles Aleochara bilineata and A. bipustulata and the hymenopteran parasitoid Trybliographa rapae. For each species, two populations from Western France were sampled and microbial communities were described through culture independent methods (454 pyrosequencing). Each sample harbored at least 59 to 261 different bacterial phylotypes but was strongly dominated by one or two. Microbial communities differed markedly in terms of composition and abundance, being mainly influenced by phylogenetic proximity but also geography to a minor extent. Surprisingly, despite their strong trophic interaction, parasitoids shared a very low proportion of microbial partners with their insect host. Three vertically transmitted symbionts from the genus Wolbachia, Rickettsia, and Spiroplasma were found in this study. Among them, Wolbachia and Spiroplasma were found in both the cabbage fly and at least one of its parasitoids, which could result from horizontal transfers through trophic interactions. Phylogenetic analysis showed that this hypothesis may explain some but not all cases. More work is needed to understand the dynamics of symbiotic associations within trophic network and the effect of these bacterial communities on the fitness of their hosts.

Host specialisation and competition asymmetry in coleopteran parasitoids.

When specialists and generalists compete for a limited resource, specialists are more constrained because they are less likely to find an alternative resource. In parasitoids with overlapping host ranges, asymmetric competition should therefore exist where specialists are more likely to win the host in a contest. Competition between parasitoids has been studied mostly in hymenopterans. In hymenopteran parasitoid wasps, females must reach the host to lay their eggs and can thus strongly influence the outcome of competition between future offspring by killing eggs or larvae of competitors. We studied competition between the free-ranging larvae of two sympatric coleopteran parasitoid rove beetles (one specialist, Aleochara bilineata and a generalist, Aleochara bipustulata) with overlapping host ranges competing in agricultural fields for pupae of the cabbage root fly. In these species, females lay their eggs in the soil, then first instars find the host where they will develop as solitary parasitoids and deal with potential competitors. Because adult longevity and fecundity favour the generalist, we postulated that first instars of the specialist would be superior larval competitors. Accordingly, we studied the outcome of encounters between first instars of the two species provided with a single host. Irrespective of its release prior to or simultaneously with its generalist competitor, the larva of the specialist most often won. Moreover, specialist larvae still won half of the encounters when generalist larvae were given a 24-h advantage. This might explain the coexistence of the two species in the field.