Researchers made some surprising findings about butterflies by sequencing internal bacteria present during three of the insects' life stages.
The researchers looked at the red postman butterfly, which is abundant in Central and South America, a University of Colorado at Boulder news release reported.
The team found the bacteria population halved when the butterflies morphed from caterpillar to chrysalis and then doubled when the pupae became a butterfly.
"What we saw was that the microbial community simplified and reorganized itself during the transition from caterpillar to pupa. Then we saw the diversity double after the adult butterflies had emerged and began going about their business of feeding. That was a little surprising to us," CU-Boulder doctoral student Tobin Hammer said in the news release.
Microorganisms have been known to affect metabolic and developmental processes such as food digestion and brain function. Researchers believe humans have 10 trillion bacteria compared to only one trillion cells.
"Butterflies are ecologically and scientifically important, and their transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis to winged adult is one of the most remarkable phenomena of the natural world," Hammer said. "But almost nothing had previously been known about what kind of internal microbes they have and how they change over the butterfly life cycle."
Researchers are interested in the microbial makeup of caterpillars because it could help them deal with the enormous amount of damage they impose on crops.
"People are starting to think about the microbiome of insects as targets for pest control, including insecticides, so we need to know what specific bacteria they contain and how they work," Hammer said.
The team chose the red postman butterfly because it feeds on amino acid-rich pollen, butterflies usually eat nectar.
"This is a unique trait to this genus and could be mediated by its microbiome," Hammer said.
The butterflies are also able to use nutrients to their diet to produce more compounds that are toxic to predators.
