Ecological Metacommunity Dynamics of the Mosquito Microbiome and its Relevance to Public Health

Date/Time: 19 February 2020, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Speaker: Matthew Medeiros, Ph.D.
Speaker Affiliation: Assistant Research Professor, Pacific Biosciences Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Venue: John A. Burns School of Medicine, Medical Education Building Auditorium (Room 315)

For more info: Cori Watanabe (808) 692-1654
Description: Microbial symbionts influence the physiology of mosquito vectors, and these effects scale to impact capacity of mosquitoes to sustain disease transmission in real-world environments. Mosquito microbiotas vary between individuals within and among populations, however the drivers of this variation are poorly understood. Understanding the drivers of mosquito microbiome assembly may inform strategies to suppress mosquito-borne disease by modulating the composition of in situ mosquito microbiotas in a manner that lowers vectorial capacity. Here, natural and controlled experiments are performed to elucidate patterns of mosquito microbiome assembly, using a metacommunity framework that integrates local-to-regional, deterministic, and stochastic processes to understand how ecological communities form. These experiments reveal microbial interactions in cosymbiosis may be an important factor in structuring mosquito microbiotas, that the environment heavily modulates mosquito microbiome assembly, and that this influence of the environment on the composition of adult mosquito microbiotas is mediated by the host. We conclude that the assembly of the mosquito microbiome is a niche-driven process, which has important implications for predicting the transmission of mosquito-borne disease in nature and selecting microbial platforms for paratransgenic strategies to suppress that transmission.
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