Bacterial communities in carnivorous pitcher plants colonize and persist in inquiline mosquitoes

The leaves of carnivorous pitcher plants harbor diverse communities of inquiline species, including bacteria and larvae of the pitcher plant mosquito (Wyeomyia smithii), which aid the plant by processing captured prey. Despite the growing appreciation for this system as a tractable model in which to study food web dynamics and the moniker of W. smithii as a keystone predator in this microecosystem, very little is known about microbiota acquisition and assembly in W. smithii mosquitoes or the impacts of W. smithii-microbiota interactions on mosquito and/or plant fitness. Here, we used high throughput sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicons to compare microbiota diversity in field-derived W. smithii larvae to laboratory-colonized larvae, and characterize microbiota acquisition and assembly across W. smithii life history.