Geographic heterogeneity in Anopheles albimanus microbiota is lost within one generation of laboratory colonization

Research on mosquito-microbe interactions may lead to new tools for mosquito and mosquito-borne disease control. To date, such research has largely utilized laboratory-reared mosquitoes that may lack the microbial diversity of wild populations. To better understand how mosquito microbiota may vary across different geographic locations and upon laboratory colonization, we characterized the microbiota of F1 progeny of wild-caught adult Anopheles albimanus from four locations in Guatemala using high throughput 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. A total of 132 late instar larvae and 135 2-5day old, non-blood-fed virgin adult females were reared under identical laboratory conditions, pooled (3 individuals/pool) and analyzed. Larvae from mothers collected at different sites showed different microbial compositions (p=0.001; F = 9.5), but these differences were no longer present at the adult stage (p=0.12; F =1.6). This indicates that mosquitoes retain a significant portion of their field-derived microbiota throughout immature development but shed them before or during adult eclosion. This is the first time the microbiota of F1 progeny of wild-caught mosquitoes has been characterized in relation to parental collection site, and our findings provide evidence that geographically associated heterogeneity in microbiota composition persists for a single generation, but only until the end of the larval stage. These findings advance our understanding of how the mosquito microbiota is altered upon first laboratory colonization, and raises considerations for how mosquito microbiome research may be extended beyond the laboratory to field settings.