2Animal host or other

2Animal host or other AZD8055 environment in which the subject having homology with the present sequence is described in GenBank records. 3Unc. = ‘Uncultured’. OTUs are defined

at 97% similarity threshold. Clones ID are followed by letters A,B or C to identify the three insect guts specimens. Phylogenetic analyses revealed the presence of six distinct major phylogenetic groups from the sequenced clones. The sequences showed a range of homology values with the GenBank database records that for most cases was remarkably low (Table 2). Considering the totality of the 87 clones, the Firmicutes phylum represented 58,6% of all retrieved sequences, and over 60% of the clones showed homologies as low as 92-94% with existing database subjects. Bacteroidetes represented 16.1% of the sequences, with homologies 89-94% to GenBank entries. Only few clones of the Actinobacteria (whose phylum represented 11.5% of the retrieved sequences)

displayed similarity values qualifying for species level relatedness (≥97%) with described records. The remainder of the clones were affiliated with the Deltaproteobacteria (8.0%) and with the Alpha- and Betaproteobacteria, classes (<5% each). Although culturable strains affiliated to the Gammaproteobacteria were obtained from the gut (Table 1), no clone sequences affiliated with this class were retrieved, presumably Romidepsin due to their rarity within the total community. The taxonomical groups resulted homogeneously distributed through the samples analyzed. There was no statistical difference in the distribution of the phylogenetic groups of Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes from the different midgut samples (Fisher’s exact test, P = 0.22). All guts had an outstanding majority of OTUs belonging to the Firmicutes. Although the BLAST analysis gave similarities that in most cases were below the species and even genus limit (respectively for the 89.04% and 63% of the samples), nevertheless the best matches of a vast majority of clones corresponded to bacteria occurring Methamphetamine in different

insects gut, including ants, termites, and beetles (Table 2). It is worth adding that more than 80% of these hosts spend at least part of their life cycle in the soil, and ~46% of them belong to the Coleoptera order (Carabidae, Scarabaeidae and Geotrupidae). Another key finding is the fact that groups of taxonomically distinct clones from C. servadeii have their respective GenBank matches in sequences that were found also in the same insect host species. For example, three non-identical Clostridiales clones are closely related to three different bacteria that all come from the coleopteran Pachnoda epipphiata, [50] which also hosts the closest relatives to some of the Bacteroidetes clones (Table 2).

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