Data set on the diversity and core members of bacterial community associated with two specialist fruit flies Bactrocera melastomatos and B. umbrosa (Insecta, Tephritidae)

Bactrocera melastomatos Drew & Hancock and Bactrocera um-brosa (Fabricius) are fruit flies of the subfamily Dacinae un-der the family Tephritidae [1] . B. melastomatos occurs in In-dia (Andaman Island), Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singa-pore, and Indonesia (Sumatra, Kalimantan, Java) [1] while B. umbrosa is distributed from southern Thailand and Malaysia to New Guinea and New Caledonia [2] . The adult male flies of B. melastomatos are attracted to Cue lure while the adult male flies of B. umbrosa are attracted to methyl eugenol [3] . Fruit flies of Bactrocera melastomatos infest Melastomat-aceae while those of B. umbrosa infest Moraceae. We com-pare the diversity of microbiota associated with the wild adult males of these two specialist fruit flies infesting dif-ferent families of host plants. Targeted 16S rRNA gene (V3 -V4 region) was sequenced using the Illumina MiSeq plat-form. Six bacterial phyla (Actinobacteria, Armatimonadetes, Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria/Melainabacteria group, Firmicutes, Proteobacteria) were detected at 97% similarity clustering and 0.001% abundance filtering. Four phyla (Actinobacteria, Bac- teroidetes, Firmicutes, Proteobacteria) were present in all the specimens studied. Proteobacteria was the predominant phy-lum in both B. melastomatos and B. umbrosa. Enterobacteri-aceae was the predominant family in UM B. melastomatos and B. umbrosa, and Orbaceae was the predominant family in Awana B. melastomatos. Klebsiella was the predominant genus in B. umbrosa, Citrobacter in UM B. melastomatos, and Orbus in Awana B. melastomatos. Double Wolbachia infections were present in UM B. melastomatos. In general, the bacterial di-versity and richness varied within and between the samples of B. melastomatos and B. umbrosa.(c) 2022 Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Automated summary

This study compared the microbiota diversity associated with wild adult male fruit flies (Bactrocera melastomatos and Bactrocera umbrosa) infesting different host plant families. The results showed variations in bacterial composition and diversity within and between the two fruit fly species, suggesting the influence of host plants on the microbiota.