<i>Phlebotomus duboscqi</i> gut microbiota dynamics in the context of <i>Leishmania</i> infection

<h4>Introduction</h4>The manipulation of the gut microbiota of disease vectors has emerged as a new approach to use in the integrated control of vector-borne diseases. For this purpose, a deep knowledge of their gut microbial communities is essential. To our knowledge, to date, no study has documented the gut microbiome dynamics of <i>Phlebotomus duboscqi</i> sand flies over the entire time-period required for the maturation of a <i>Leishmania</i> infection. Here, we address this limitation.<h4>Methods</h4><i>P. duboscqi</i> midguts were dissected both before and at different days after <i>L. major</i> infection and subjected to genomic DNA extraction followed by amplification of the V3-V4 hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA, sequencing, and metagenomics analysis.<h4>Results</h4>We observed a decrease in the number of Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) early after infection, at D2, and late after infection, at D12. More so <i>Sphingomonas</i>, <i>Ochrobactrum</i>, and <i>Serratia</i> emerged as the most prevalent genera in relative terms, before, early after, and late after infection, respectively. These results translated into a separation between the 3 groups in the context of a beta diversity analysis, with statistical relevance. Importantly, we were able to establish <i>Corynebacterium</i> spp. and <i>Enterococcus</i> spp. as potential markers of non-infected and infected sand flies, respectively, as well as <i>Streptococcus</i> spp., <i>Sphingomonas</i> spp., <i>Ralstonia</i> spp., and <i>Abiotrophia</i> spp. as potential specific markers of late infections (ANCOM-BC analysis).<h4>Discussion</h4>Overall, we show that the composition of the gut microbiota of <i>P. duboscqi</i> sand flies changes significantly over the course of an infection with <i>L. major</i> parasites.