Despite the extensive research literature on bean beetles, little is known about their microbiome. Sevim et al. (2016) used culture-based techniques to identify internal bacterial species in C. maculatus. Using culturing and 16s rRNA sequencing, they identified 11 bacterial isolates as belonging to three genera (Bacillus, Staphylococcus, and Pantoea). In introductory biology laboratory courses at Emory University, students have identified bacteria in three main genera (Enterobacter, Enterococcus, and Staphylococcus) and seven other genera at very low frequencies using culture-based methods (i.e., bacterial culturing, PCR and Sanger sequencing).
You can explore the phenotype and colony-based sequence data collected to date using the following search pages: