The influence of extrinsic factors on the diversity of the mosquito microbiota

Vector-borne pathogens transmitted by mosquitoes are a continuous threat to public health affecting mainly the tropics and adjacent regions. Rising insecticide resistance in mosquito populations has led to a need for new mosquito control strategies. The mosquito microbiota, a community of microorganisms naturally associated with mosquito tissues, offers potential for mosquito control since it plays critical roles in development, blood-feeding, immunity, fecundity, and pathogen transmission. Mosquitoes develop in diverse environments where they acquire their microbiota, often leading to high microbial diversity between mosquito populations and species. However, multiple studies have provided contrasting results on the microbial composition, showing that the impact of environmental variables are not always the same for every geographic region and time. Therefore, our study aim was to evaluate three extrinsic variables; time, habitat, and mosquito species, to determine whether they play critical roles in shaping microbial diversity in mosquitoes. We used CO2-baited CDC light traps to collect mosquitoes from a local conservation area in Florida. Mosquitoes were identified to species level using morphological keys. We selected three of the most abundant species in our study; Aedes taeniorhynchus, Anopheles crucians, and Culex nigripalpus, and profiled their microbiota using 2x 300bp 16s rRNA Illumina Mi-Seq. Our data show that the impact of extrinsic factors on the microbiota is variable; where the role of time, habitat, and mosquito species shape the microbiota differently under different circumstances. We are currently performing analyses of mosquito fungal diversity to observe if the same trends apply to the mosquito mycobiota.