Extrinsic factors regulating mosquito microbial diversity in a local conservation area

Mosquito-associated microorganisms form important relationships with their hosts, affecting their physiology, their metabolic state, and the activity of their immune pathways. The presence or absence of the microbial community, or specific individual taxa can modulate infection and transmission of human pathogens either directly, or indirectly via modulation via the mosquito immune system. Critically, mosquito microbe interactions remain under described, and it is still unclear how extrinsic variables influence the composition of the mosquito microbiome, or what role microbiome by environment interactions play in the transmission of mosquito-borne pathogens in nature. We sought to understand the elucidate the role of three extrinsic variables play in shaping microbial diversity in mosquitoes: time of collection, host species, biome at site of collection. We used CDC mini light traps to collect over 1000 wild mosquitoes from an ecologically diverse conservation area in Florida over a five-month period and then used morphological keys to identify the collected specimens. We then used 16S rRNA Illumina sequencing to characterize the microbiomes of a subset of these mosquitoes. This study provides important clarity on the role of key extrinsic variables on microbial diversity and composition on mosquito communities in nature.