Revealing the diversity of eukaryotic termite symbionts

Termites gained the ability to digest nutrient-poor wood materials due to the protists found within their hindguts. Termite ancestors harbored protists before they diverged from a roach lineage around 150 million years ago and a eusocial lifestyle ensured that the microbes were contained within and co-diversified with their termite host species as protists are passed throughout a colony. Termites play significant roles in shaping and driving ecosystem functions; however, termite-symbiont evolutionary history remains poorly known. While it is known that termite species contains their own cocktail of protist species in the hindgut, the true diversity of each microbial community remains unknown for most of the 800 protist-dependent termite species as well as the level of cospeciation termites and their symbionts have achieved. Therefore, a cospeciation analysis of termites and their gut symbionts with more complete DNA sequences are required to understand the symbionts’ evolutionary history more in depth than current techniques are providing. The protist diversity of 45 species of termites and their sister lineage, Cryptocercus, were analyzed via long read amplicon sequencing of gut microbial communities to produce an in-depth analysis of which symbionts are present in varying Blattodea lineages and how these two sets of organisms evolved in parallel.