Speaker
Description
Over ten thousand years ago, Drosophila melanogaster expanded from its sub-Saharan ancestral range to temperate regions, relying on thermotolerance mechanisms to adapt to new abiotic conditions. These mechanisms enable the fruit fly to survive fluctuating temperatures and recover from cold-induced injuries, with their effectiveness closely linked to the insect’s diet and nutritional status. Gut microbes, acquired through food intake, play a crucial role in providing essential nutrients, influencing the fly’s nutritional health. This suggests that gut microbial communities may directly or indirectly contribute to Drosophila melanogaster’s cold tolerance mechanisms. In this study, we demonstrate that the microbial community of wild-caught fruit flies fluctuates with the seasons, with season-specific microbial partners. To investigate the potential role of microbes in Drosophila melanogaster’s cold tolerance, we infected axenic flies with fungal and/or bacterial strains isolated from wild-caught flies and tested their fitness. Our results show that gut microbes can mitigate cold-induced delays in larval development, decreases in reproductive success, and lower mortality rates after cold shock. Further research is essential to unravel the mechanistic basis of these interactions, which is necessary for predicting the survival of natural populations of microbe-associated insects beyond our laboratory strains, particularly in the context of global climate change.
