article · BMC Microbiology
Intestinal bacteria significantly influence the feeding choices, reproductive fitness, and lifespan of the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis. Tests comparing flies with natural gut microbiomes against sterile, axenic flies revealed that probiotic diets directly affect foraging behaviour. Axenic flies demonstrate a particularly strong and rapid preference for food supplemented with bacteria over standard diets containing all amino acids. Specific bacterial strains produce distinct physiological outcomes. Diets supplemented with Pantoea dispersa and Enterobacter cloacae increase egg production in female flies while reducing their overall lifespan. In contrast, diets enriched with Enterococcus faecalis and Klebsiella oxytoca extend adult survival at the expense of lower fecundity. In comparison, a simple sugar diet prevents egg laying entirely while supporting longer survival. Overall, targeted bacterial supplementation alters foraging choices in ways that distinctly modulate reproduction and longevity in this agricultural pest.
Bactrocera dorsalis is a damaging agricultural pest, and understanding how gut bacteria alter its life cycle is essential for designing smarter management techniques. Revealing that specific microbes can either boost reproduction or lengthen lifespan offers tools to manipulate pest biology. These insights provide practical methods to improve insect rearing for population control campaigns, such as sterile insect release programmes that protect fruit crops from infestation.
The findings offer early-stage biological formulations to support sterile insect technique programmes and mass-rearing facilities. Facility operators could use specific bacterial isolates to manipulate fly lifespans or boost egg output during mass production, or develop targeted baits based on microbial feeding attractants. While the underlying physiological effects have been demonstrated experimentally in a laboratory setting, practical field-ready baits and standardised dietary formulations remain in early-stage research.
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BACKGROUND: The gut bacteria of tephritid fruit flies play prominent roles in nutrition, reproduction, maintenance and ecological adaptations of the host. Here, we adopted an approach based on direct observation of symbiotic or axenic flies feeding on dishes seeded with drops of full diet (containing all amino acids) or full diet supplemented with bacteria at similar concentrations to explore the effects of intestinal bacteria on foraging decision and fitness of Bactrocera dorsalis. RESULTS: The results show that intestinal probiotics elicit beneficial foraging decision and enhance the female reproduction fitness and survival of B. dorsalis (symbiotic and axenic), yet preferences for probiotic diets were significantly higher in axenic flies to which they responded faster compared to full diet. Moreover, females fed diet supplemented with Pantoea dispersa and Enterobacter cloacae laid more eggs but had shorter lifespan while female fed Enterococcus faecalis and Klebsiella oxytoca enriched diets lived longer but had lower fecundity compared to the positive control. Conversely, flies fed sugar diet (negative control) were not able to produce eggs, but lived longer than those from the positive control. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that intestinal bacteria can drive the foraging decision in a way which promotes the reproduction and survival of B. dorsalis. Our data highlight the potentials of gut bacterial isolates to control the foraging behavior of the fly and empower the sterile insect technique (SIT) program through the mass rearing.
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DOI: 10.1186/s12866-019-1607-3
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