Dysbacteriosis of the Intestinal Flora Is an Important Reason for the Death of Adult House Flies Caused by Beauveria bassiana

Abstract

Beauveria bassiana is one of the most widespread insect pathogens and can be used in the biological control of agricultural, forestry and medical pests. The mechanisms by which B. bassiana leads to mortality in different host insects are also different. For house flies, B. bassiana has strong virulence, but its microecological mechanism is not clear. In this paper, the virulence of three strains of B. bassiana (TB, CB and BB) isolated from different hosts to house flies was studied. The results showed that the three strains of B. bassiana had strong pathogenicity to house fly adults. Specifically, TB was the strongest, CB was the second strongest, and BB was the weakest, with maximum lethal effects on house fly populations 5, 6, and 7 days after infection, respectively. Further study showed that the intestinal flora of house flies was disordered 3, 4, and 5 days after B. bassiana TB, CB and BB strain infection, respectively. Intestinal flora dysbacteriosis may be an important reason for the death of house flies caused by B. bassiana. After infection, the negative interaction ratio of bacteria in the house fly intestine decreased, and the stronger the virulence was, the lower the negative interaction ratio was. The time from B. bassiana infection to intestinal flora dysbacteriosis was not fixed. We named this period the “spring stage”. The stronger the virulence of the B. bassiana strain was, the shorter the “spring stage” was. Therefore, the “spring stage” can be used as a virulence marker for evaluating the pathogenicity of different B. bassiana strains.