Highlights•Multiple strains of the heritable bacterium, Spiroplasma, protect insects against
infection by natural enemies.•Defensive capabilities are broad, impacting parasitic …

Ecosystem engineers strongly influence the communities in which they live by modifying
habitats and altering resource availability. These biogenic changes can persist beyond the …

Highlights•Climate change will affect insect through their association with symbiotic
bacteria.•Mutualistic symbionts can determine the thermal tolerance of host insects.•Obligate …

Ants can display modified behaviors that represent the extended phenotypes of genes
expressed by parasites that infect them. In such cases, the modifications benefit the parasite …

All organisms have evolved a wide range of strategies to protect against natural enemies,
from complex avoidance behaviours to sophisticated immune systems, and insects are no …

Abstract Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) play an important role in the pharmacological and
food industry due to their therapeutic and nutritional properties. Being the most abundant …

Virtually all higher organisms form holobionts with associated microbiota. To understand the
biology of holobionts we need to know how species assemble and interact. Controlled …

Many parasites interfere with the behaviour of their hosts. In social animals, such as ants,
parasitic interference can cause changes on the level of the individual and also on the level …

Phlebotomine sandflies are vectors of the humans' and mammals' parasite Leishmania spp.
Although the role of gut microbiome in the biological cycle of insects is acknowledged, we …

Defenses conferred by microbial symbionts play a vital role in the health and fitness of their
animal hosts. An important outstanding question in the study of defensive symbiosis is what …