Bacteria associated with salivary glands of cicada Hyalessa maculaticollis (Motschulsky) (Hemiptera: Cicadidae)

Abstract:

[Objective] This paper aims to clarify the bacteria associated with the salivary glands of cicada Hyalessa maculaticollis (Motschulsky), and to address if the endosymbiont Candidatus Sulcia muelleri occurrs in the salivary glands. [Methods] We investigated the bacterial community in the salivary glands of cicada H. maculaticollis using 16S rRNA restriction fragment-length polymorphism (RFLP). [Results] We identified seven bacteria in the salivary glands, which belong to the Phyla Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. The bacterial community is dominated by Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter sp., each of them accounted for 48.7% in the clone library. In total, the other five bacterial species (Thermomonas brevis, Sphingomonas sp., Methyloversatilis sp., Anaerococcus sp. and Bacillus sp.) together accounted for 2.05% in the clone library. [Conclusion] The results show that the bacterial species composition in the cicada salivary glands of H. maculaticollis was relatively simple, which were dominated by two bacterial species. The endosymbiont Candidatus Sulcia muelleri of Auchenorrhyncha, formerly detected from bacteriomes of related auchenorrhynchan hosts, were not detected in the salivary glands of H. maculaticollis. The bacteria harbored in salivary glands of cicadas probably play an important role in both food ingestion and interactions between the cicadas and their host plants. However, whether the related bacteria are commonly harbored in other cicadas and their certain function need to be further investigated.