Spatial and temporal structure of environmentally-acquired Caballeronia symbionts of a leaffooted bug

The leaffooted bug Leptoglossus zonatus (Coreidae) acquires its Caballeronia (Burkholderiaceae) bacterial symbiont from the environment, presumably from local soil.We examined the role of space and time in the distribution of Burkholderia sensu lato (including Caballeronia) strains in bugs and their associated soils. We compared samples within trees, within plots, within cities and among different cities in pomegranate orchards in the Southwest USA. We also repeatedly sampled a population from a single orchard over the course of two years. Caballeronia lineages were spatially structured among soils and bugs, with fewer shared as distance between samples increased. Turnover of strains between timepoints remained relatively constant, suggesting that the community composition of hosted Caballeronia is not undergoing directional change over time. Ultimately, understanding how symbiont strains of varying local benefit are distributed in space and time will help us predict how geography and seasonality are related to host fitness in environmentally acquired symbioses. (This sequencing run also includes samples of the coreids Leptoglossus phyllopus, L. fulvicornis, L. oppositus, L. brevirostris and Anasa sp. and the berytid Jalysus wickhami; these data were presented in the supplement.)