Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Insect Sci.

Sec. Insect Health and Pathology

Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/finsc.2025.1639013

Gut microbiota variability in dung beetles: prokaryotes vary according to the phylogeny of the host species while fungi vary according to the diet

Provisionally accepted
Gianluca  NattaGianluca Natta1Samuele  VoyronSamuele Voyron1Erica  LuminiErica Lumini2Alex  LainiAlex Laini1Angela  RoggeroAngela Roggero1*Alessandro  FioritoAlessandro Fiorito1Claudia  PalestriniClaudia Palestrini1Antonio  RolandoAntonio Rolando1
  • 1Universita degli Studi di Torino Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e Biologia dei Sistemi, Turin, Italy
  • 2Istituto per la Protezione Sostenibile delle Piante Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Turin, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Dung beetles (Coleoptera, Scarabaeoidea) support several ecological processes and services making them important ecosystem engineers. The dung beetle gut microbiota is involved in many of these ecological services. In the present study, we analyzed the microbiota of 90 individuals of three Onthophagus species feeding on different dung types. Our aim was to understand whether the species identity affected the microbiota more than the dung ingested and whether this conditioning applied equally to prokaryotes and fungi. We also compared the taxonomic and functional variability of the microorganisms to check for similarities between individuals. Using molecular analyses, we characterized the alpha and beta diversities, core and indicator taxa and taxonomic and functional composition of the gut microbiota. Alpha diversity analyses revealed diet, species and sex to influence diversity parameters but no clear differences in the diversity patterns for prokaryotes vs fungi. Conversely, all other analyses consistently showed differences in the composition patterns for prokaryotes vs fungi, with prokaryotes mostly varying according to host species identity and fungi varying according to dung type. This suggests that most prokaryotes in the dung beetle microbiota are definitive symbionts, whereas many fungi are transient symbionts. We found evidence of great similarity in the functional composition of the microbiota despite strong taxonomic dissimilarities. The results emphasize the need to consider both the prokaryotic and fungal components of the microbiota. They also suggest microbial composition analyses to be preferable to alpha diversity analyses for identifying patterns of variation that depend on phylogeny and diet.

Keywords: Bacteria, Coprophagy, Ecological functions, functional similarity, Fungi

Received: 01 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Natta, Voyron, Lumini, Laini, Roggero, Fiorito, Palestrini and Rolando. 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: Angela Roggero, Universita degli Studi di Torino Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e Biologia dei Sistemi, Turin, Italy

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.