Fiber-associated microbiomes of O. disjunctus (Coleoptera:Passalidae)

Saproxylophagous insects, which ingest dead wood, rely on complex gut microbiomes for lignocellulose digestion. The symbiotic digestion of lignocellulose has been best studied in termites, but a similar but poorly understood mechanism has evolved in members of Passalidae (Coleoptera). Recent surveys of the horned passalus Odontotaenius disjunctus have shown its gut microbiome to be complex and spatially stratified to reflect the compartmentation and steep physicochemical gradients in its gut, indicating the presence of microhabitat-specific communities in the passalid gut. Plant material in the intestinal tracts of herbivorous mammals and termites has been shown to be colonized by specific microbial members of the gut microbiome, but nothing is known about the existence of a fiber-associated community in passalids or its role in lignocellulose digestion. In this study, we sequenced relevant fiber-associated microbiomes using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing.