Diversity and partner selection of environmentally‐derived <i>Burkholderia</i> sensu lato in stinkbugs

Abstract Insects and microbes form diverse symbiotic associations that are fundamental to ecosystem functioning and the adaptive success of hosts. For instance, some Burkholderia sensu lato (s.l.) bacteria are facultative symbionts in stinkbug taxa, acquired from the environmental soil in each generation. Based on large‐scale sampling and deep sequencing data, we hope to reveal the diversity of Burkholderia in stinkbug species across various localities, determine the factors influencing the Burkholderia communities within stinkbugs and explore the strain concordance pattern between stinkbugs and Burkholderia in the soil. The Burkholderiaceae sequences accounted for an average of 75.1% of all bacterial sequences in the 215 stinkbug samples. Among them, Caballeronia , Paraburkholderia and Burkholderia sensu stricto (s.s.) represented more than 99.9% of the total number of Burkholderiaceae. The linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe analysis) revealed hierarchical specificity patterns in Burkholderia ‐stinkbug associations across host taxonomic levels. Beta diversity analysis revealed that both the geographical location and classification status of stinkbugs significantly affect Burkholderia communities; however, the proportion of variance explained was consistently low. Several low‐abundance strains of soil Burkholderia appeared frequently in stinkbug individuals, suggesting that differences in competitiveness might exist between strains. Our results also suggested that the colonisation of Burkholderia in stinkbugs is, to some extent, strain density‐dependent when the environment contains multiple closely related Burkholderia strains. These findings deepened our understanding of the symbiosis between stinkbugs and Burkholderia in their natural state.