For over 300 million years, insects have relied on symbiotic microbes for nutrition and
defence. However, it is unclear whether specific ecological conditions have repeatedly …

The ontogenetic origins of the bacteriocytes, which are cells that harbour bacterial
intracellular endosymbionts in multicellular animals, are unknown. During embryonic …

The ecological radiation of herbivorous beetles is among the most successful in the animal
kingdom. It coincided with the rise and diversification of flowering plants, requiring beetles to …

Timing the acquisition of a beneficial microbe relative to the evolutionary history of its host
can shed light on the adaptive impact of a partnership. Here, we investigated the onset and …

While genome sequencing has expanded our knowledge of symbiosis, role assignment
within multi-species microbiomes remains challenging due to genomic redundancy and the …

Social insect queens and workers can engage in conflict over reproductive allocation when
they have different fitness optima. Here, we show that queens have control over queen …

Many insects feeding on nutritionally challenging diets like plant sap, leaves, or wood
engage in ancient associations with bacterial symbionts that supplement limiting nutrients or …

Host-associated microbiota can influence host phenotypic variation, fitness and potential to
adapt to local environmental conditions. In turn, both host evolutionary history and the …

Insects can establish a variety of symbiotic associations with bacteria that can have a
significant impact on their evolutionary ecology. Some bacterial lineages are particularly …

Building differences between genetically equivalent units is a fundamental challenge for
every (super) organism with reproductive division of labor. In ants, reproductive or worker …