In animal-microbe interactions, symbiont lifestyles in the host can range from intimate intracellular environments to looser extracellular associations. For each of these lifestyles, symbiont acquisition and maintenance will likely require specific sets of adaptations and interactions between both partners. Deep-sea mussels harbor their symbiotic bacteria in or on specialized gill cells called...
The growth of Drosophila melanogaster larvae depend on nutrient-providing and pathogen-suppressing microbial symbionts; these symbionts are transferred through faecal matter deposition by egg-laying females. In different plant substrates, larvae exhibit higher developmental success in the presence of autochthonous versus allochthonous symbionts. This suggests that the capacity of symbiont...
The Mediterranean Sea, known for its high biodiversity and endemic species, has experienced significant geological events that shaped its current biological landscape. This study focuses on gutless oligochaetes, which rely entirely on symbiotic bacteria for nutrition, and explores their evolutionary path and population structure across the Mediterranean. Gutless oligochaetes and other marine...
Insects developing on ephemeral patches are always pressed by resource depletion. Host- associated microbial communities (microbiota) may alleviate this stress by interacting with the substrate and temporarily stabilizing the developmental environment. Drosophila melanogaster is breeding on patches of different rotting fruits. Due to the variability of patches, microbial symbionts need to be...
Chemosynthesis is the basis for symbioses between bacteria and animals forming rich ecosystems in the dark of the deep sea. However, chemosynthesis also fuels symbioses in shallow-water sediments. One group of such coastal chemosymbionts is a diverse genus of sulfur-oxidizing gammaproteobacteria called "Candidatus Thiosymbion". The symbiotic lifestyles of ‘Ca. Thiosymbion’ differ...
Mosquito-borne viruses have emerged as global health threats due to their rapid spread and high disease burden. These viruses share a common feature: the virus is inoculated in the host skin tissue, a tissue colonized by a complex microbial community. The early events at the skin interface are critical for virus replication, yet the role of host skin bacteria remains unclear. In this work, we...
Symbiotic relationships are an inevitable part of the existence of all living organisms. Where one may be more beneficial, the other may be very harmful, and in the life of an organism these types of interactions never occur in only one form. As sessile organisms, plants are constantly exposed to mutualistic, commensal, and parasitic interactions, often at the same time. Sweet potato (Ipomoea...
Flavobacteriales endosymbionts are well described as obligate endosymbionts of cockroaches (Blattabacterium sp.) and sveral Auchhenorhyncha (Karelsulcia muelleri). In the last years we discovered them also in several beetle families, mostly specialized to provision precursors of tryrosine. Tyrosine is a central building block of the insect cuticle and elimination or inhibition of these...
