Microbiota of Polistine Wasps: A Comparison of Four Species From India

Studying the microbiota of closely related species can provide important insights into the essential roles of symbiotic microbes in the physiology of organisms. We have studied the bacterial microbiota of four polistine species (Vespidae: Polistinae), from India, using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing on the Oxford Nanopore platform. Many polistine species have been studied from behavioural, genetic, physiological and ecological perspectives. However, few of them were used for studying their microbiota. A recent study on the microbiota of Polistes wattii revealed that its microbiota is similar to Vespa (Vespidae: Vespinae). However, the microbiota of a single species from a single geographic location did not provide a holistic assessment of the genus’s microbiota. Therefore, here we studied and compared the microbial community of four polistine species. We used P. wattii and P. indicus from northern India and P. wattii , P. olivaceous , and Ropalidia spatulata from eastern India to compare the microbiota of different polistine species. We show that the microbiota of P. wattii from different geographic locations were more similar to each other than the other three species. Contrary to our expectation, sympatric species showed more distinct bacterial community profiles while P. wattii samples from two different locations were more similar to each other. We further conducted a multivariate analysis to assess the gut microbiota of different hymenopteran species. We show that the gut microbial communities of polistine wasps are more similar to those of Asian Vespine wasps (both carnivorous) than to those of omnivorous ants and herbivorous bees, indicating that diet is an important determinant of their bacterial microbiota.