Coexistence of Three Dominant Bacterial Symbionts in a Social Aphid and Implications for Ecological Adaptation

Aphids are associated with an array of symbionts that have diverse ecological and evolutionary effects on their hosts. To date, symbiont communities of most aphid species are still poorly characterized, especially for the social aphids. In this study, high-throughput 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing was used to assess the bacterial communities of the social aphid , and the differences in bacterial diversity with respect to ant attendance and time series were also assessed. We found that the diversity of symbionts in was low and three dominant symbionts (, and ) were stably coexisting. may help feed on the hard bamboo stems, and genetic distance analysis suggests that the in may be a new symbiont species. may be associated with the transition of reproduction mode or has a nutritional role in . Statistical tests on the diversity of bacterial communities in suggest that aphid populations attended by ants usually have a significantly higher evenness than populations without ant attendance but there was no significant difference among aphid populations from different seasons.