The Aedes aegypti adult bacterial microbiota is robust to infection with the obligate microsporidian parasite Edhazardia aedis
Data files
Jun 10, 2026 version files 3.60 MB
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fileS2.csv
6.66 KB
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fileS3.csv
1.28 KB
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phyloseq_object.rds
3.59 MB
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README.md
4.04 KB
Abstract
Edhazardia aedis is an obligate intracellular microsporidian parasite of the arthropod vector Aedes aegypti, which is responsible for the spread of several vertebrate pathogens of global health importance. E. aedis can be highly virulent to Aedes aegypti, and infection has severely detrimental effects on multiple Aedes aegypti life history traits, including longevity, body size, propensity to host-seek and blood-feed, and reproductive capacity. Herein, we queried the effect of E. aedis infection on the bacterial microbiota of adult female Aedes aegypti using high-throughput amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Analysis of sequencing data revealed that the bacterial microbiota community is strikingly robust to E. aedis infection, as we observed no significant effect on alpha or beta diversity, differential abundance of any taxa, predicted metabolic function profile, or bacterial load. The data show that E. aedis, despite dramatically impacting the health and fitness of the adult female mosquito, does not affect the microbiota. These results provide unique insight into tripartite relationships (or lack thereof) between hosts, pathogens, and the microbiota.
Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.sbcc2frnf
Description of the data and file structure
File S2 is a .csv file storing the number of reads retained at each step of bioinformatic data processing. Abdomens from Edhazardia aedis-infected or mock-infected female Aedes aegypti were subject to DNA extraction and high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene on an Illumina NextSeq 2000 platform (300 base pair paired-end reads). Cutadapt was used to trim primer and adapter contamination, as well as polyGs, from raw reads. Any forward reads containing reverse primers/adapters in the forward orientation or forward primers/adapters in the reverse complement orientation were removed, and the complementary process was repeated for the reverse reads. The DADA2 R package was used for filtering, dereplication, sample inference, chimera identification, and merging of paired-end reads. A phyloseq object was created from the ASV table using the phyloseq package in R. ASVs with undefined kingdom-level classification and ASVs assigned to mitochondria or chloroplasts were removed from the dataset. Next, the decontam R package was used to identify contaminants using the frequency method, which was implemented using index reaction DNA concentration values generated during sequencing library preparation.
File S3 is a .csv file storing the qPCR X0 qPCR values. We used quantitative PCR assays targeting the 16S rRNA bacterial gene and the RpS7 mosquito gene (VectorBase: AAEL009496), with RpS7 serving as the reference gene, to estimate the bacterial load in each sample.
phyloseq_object.rds is the final phyloseq object used in analyses.
Files and variables
File: fileS2.csv
Description: A .csv file storing the number of reads retained at each step of bioinformatic data processing.
Variables
- sample: sample name
- inf: infection treatment
- meso: mesocosm
- raw: number of forward reads in raw files
- polyg: number of forward reads after removing polyGs
- primer: number of forward reads after removing primers
- adapter: number of forward reads after removing adapters
- contams: number of forward reads after removing 1) forward reads with reverse primers/adapters in the forward orientation or forward primers/adapters in the reverse complement orientation, and 2) reverse reads with forward primers/adapters in the reverse orientation or reverse primers/adapters in the reverse complement orientation
- filterandtrim: number of forward reads after the dada2 filter and trim step
- denoise: number of forward reads after the dada2 denoise step
- merge: number of merged reads after the dada2 merge step
- chimera: number of merged reads after the dada2 chimera removal step
- chloro.mito.NA: number of merged reads after the removal of chloroplasts, mitochondria, and kingdom-level NAs
- decontam: number of merged reads after removal of contaminants using the decontam R package
- preprocess: number of merged reads after the removal of ASVs that did not appear more than 10 times
File: fileS3.csv
Description: A .csv file storing the qPCR data.
Variables
- name: sample name
- X0_RpS7: qPCR X0 values for RpS7 gene. NA values indicated that data was unable to be obtained for a sample due to insufficient remaining genomic DNA template.
- X0_16S: qPCR X0 values for 16S rRNA gene. NA values indicated that data was unable to be obtained for a sample due to insufficient remaining genomic DNA template.
File: phylseq_object.rds
Description: A .rds file containing the final phyloseq object used in analyses
Code/software
The .csv files can be viewed using any text editor software or Microsoft Excel. The .rds file can be viewed using R software.
Access information
Other publicly accessible locations of the data:
- N/A
Data was derived from the following sources:
- N/A