TITLE:
Identification and Characterization of Bacterial Community Associated with the Chewed Feeding Waste of Red Palm Weevil in Infested Date Palm Trees
AUTHORS:
AbdulAziz M. A. Mohamed, Muhammad Farooq, Malabika Roy Pathak
KEYWORDS:
Red Palm Weevil (RPW), Bacteria, Date Palm, Feeding Waste, 16S rRNA
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology,
Vol.11 No.3,
March
30,
2020
ABSTRACT: Red palm weevil (RPW), Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier) (Coleoptera,
Curculionidae), is considered one of the most damaging insect pests of date
palms in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Large scale infestation of RPW to date palm
trees leads to excessive feeding activity of the RPW larvae, which is carried
out by microorganisms present within RPW and producing a wet fermenting
material inside the trunk. Culture dependent-bacteria were isolated from
feeding waste and identified by the sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene using 8F
and 1492R universal primers. Among the culture-dependent isolated bacteria, 80%
were identified by
comparing 16S rRNA gene sequence in NCBI database, using BLAST program in
GenBank. 85% of the identified bacteria were Gram-positive while the rest of them
were Gram-negative. A high abundance of bacteria were from the Bacillaceae
family and sixteen different species of Bacillus were identified in comparison
with NCBI GenBank. The 16S rRNA gene sequences of identified bacterial strains
have been submitted to GenBank. The phylogenetic relationship was studied using
16S rRNA gene sequences, the Gram-negative bacteria came in one clade while
Gram-positive different Bacillus sp. and strains showed evolutionary
closeness to each other and accordingly, they came in one major clade under three
different sub-clades in the phylogenetic tree. The findings of new Bacillus strains in the natural habitat of the date plam trees in the Kingdom of
Bahrain, pledge a vast area of research on RPW bio-control research arena.