The functional microbiome of arthropods

Many studies on the microbiome of animals have been reported but a comprehensive analysis is lacking. Here we present a meta-analysis on the microbiomes of arthropods and their terrestrial habitat, focusing on the functional profile of bacterial communities derived from metabolic traits that are essential for microbial life. We report a detailed analysis of probably the largest set of biochemically defined functional traits ever examined in microbiome studies. This work deals with the phylum proteobacteria, which is usually dominant in marine and terrestrial environments and covers all functions associated with microbiomes. The considerable variation in the distribution and abundance of proteobacteria in microbiomes has remained fundamentally unexplained. This analysis reveals discrete functional groups characteristic for adaptation to anaerobic conditions, which appear to be defined by environmental filtering of taxonomically related taxa. The biochemical diversification of the functional groups suggests an evolutionary trajectory in the structure of arthropods’ microbiome, from metabolically versatile to specialized proteobacterial organisms that are adapted to complex environments such as the gut of social insects. Bacterial distribution in arthropods’ microbiomes also shows taxonomic clusters that do not correspond to functional groups and may derive from other factors, including common contaminants of soil and reagents.