ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Population, Community, and Ecosystem Dynamics
This article is part of the Research TopicResearch Advances on Drosophila suzukii - Volume IIView all articles
Microbiome composition of Drosophila suzukii varies across geographical regions
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Hawai'i at Manoa Pacific Biosciences Research Center, Honolulu, United States
- 2University of Nevada Las Vegas School of Life Sciences, Las Vegas, United States
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Drosophila suzukii is a common agricultural pest in numerous parts of the world, costing more than $500 million annually in crop loss in the United States alone (Bolda et al., 2010a). Understanding the genetic and physiological mechanisms underlying its remarkable adaptability has been a major focus for the agricultural industry as well as evolutionary biologists. The microbiome, the community of microbes associated with host organisms, can play a pivotal role in local adaptation by improving host resilience to environmental stress and providing access to new sources of nutrition. Here, we test the hypothesis that the colonization of non-native regions is associated with the incorporation of regionally-specific microbial taxa. We compare the microbiome profiles of wild-caught D. suzukii across five global sites, Asia, Europe, the United Kingdom, North America, and Hawai'i. We also compare microbial communities of D. suzukii found in Hawai'i to another local invasive species, D. immigrans, and native Hawaiian drosophilids. Our results reveal that wild-caught D. suzukii from Asia, Europe, the United Kingdom, North America, and the Hawaiian Islands exhibit distinct microbial compositions indicating that the environment is a stronger driver of microbiome composition than species identity. Seven bacterial families were conserved between all wild D. suzukii populations. Within Hawaiʻi, non-native D. suzukii bacterial communities differed from those of native Hawaiian Drosophila species as well as non-native D. immigrans. By contrast, fungal microbiome profiles between the Hawaiian Drosophila and two invasive species closely resemble each other. In sum, all populations of D. suzukii in this study contain a subset of conserved bacterial families but also incorporate local bacterial taxa. This strategy may contribute to the rapid range expansion of D. suzukii and enhance its ability to exploit new dietary sources.
Keywords: Drosophila immigrans, Hawaiian Drosophila, Mycobiome, fungal microbiome, Microbial Diversity
Received: 01 Sep 2025; Accepted: 17 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Medeiros, Burger, Price and Yew. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Joanne Y. Yew, jyew@hawaii.edu
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