Environmental Factors and the Symbiont Cardinium Influence the Bacterial Microbiome of Spider Mites Across the Landscape.

Microbes play a key role in the biology, ecology, and evolution of arthropods. Despite accumulating data on microbial communities in arthropods that feed on plants using piercing-sucking mouthparts, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the composition and assembly factors of the microbiota, particularly in field-collected spider mites. Here, we applied 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing to investigate the characters of the bacterial community in 140 samples representing 420 mite individuals, belonging to eight Tetranychus species (Acari: Tetranychidae) collected from 26 sites in China. The results showed that the bacterial composition of spider mites varied significantly among different species, locations, and plants. The environment showed a significant influence on the bacterial community of spider mites, with different relative contributions. Latitude and precipitation were found to be the main factors influencing the bacterial community composition. The dissimilarity of bacterial community and geographical distance between mite locations were significantly correlated. The assembly of spider mite bacterial communities seemed to be mainly influenced by stochastic processes. Furthermore, the symbiont Cardinium was found to be important in shaping the microbiota of many Tetranychus species. The relative abundance of Cardinium was > 50% in T. viennensis, T. urticae G, T. urticae R, and T. turkestani. Removing Cardinium reads from our analysis significantly changed Shannon diversity index and weighted beta diversity in these species. Altogether, this study provides novel insights into bacterial diversity patterns that contribute to our knowledge of the symbiotic relationships between arthropods and their bacterial communities.