The gut microbiota composition of the moth Brithys crini reflects the insect metamorphosis

Lepidoptera are holometabolous insects and the influence of all the drastic changes suffered during the metamorphosis on the gut microbiome composition and diversity has been poorly addressed, specially in monophagous species. In this work using Illumina sequencing of 16s rRNA genes, we investigated the composition and bacterial diversity of the intestinal microbiota of the monophagous moth Brithys crini. As drastic changes such as metamorphosis are critical to the microbiota stability and heritability, we studied the microbiota at three different life stages: egg, larvae and adult. The midgut and hindgut of Lepidoptera have different physiological and physicochemical properties possibly harboring different microbial communities. Thus, from larvae we also analyzed the difference on microbial composition and diversity between both intestinal regions.