Complex Relationships at the Intersection of Insect Gut Microbiomes and Plant Defenses
- PDF / 964,139 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 102 Downloads / 159 Views
REVIEW ARTICLE
Complex Relationships at the Intersection of Insect Gut Microbiomes and Plant Defenses Charles J. Mason 1 Received: 18 March 2020 / Revised: 13 May 2020 / Accepted: 27 May 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Insect herbivores have ubiquitous associations with microorganisms that have major effects on how host insects may interact in their environment. Recently, increased attention has been given to how insect gut microbiomes mediate interactions with plants. In this paper, I discuss the ecology and physiology of gut bacteria associated with insect herbivores and how they may shape interactions between insects and their various host plants. I first establish how microbial associations vary between insects with different feeding styles, and how the insect host physiology and ecology can shape stable or transient relationships with gut bacteria. Then, I describe how these relationships factor in with plant nutrition and plant defenses. Within this framework, I suggest that many of the interactions between plants, insects, and the gut microbiome are context-dependent and shaped by the type of defense and the isolates present in the environment. Relationships between insects and plants are not pairwise, but instead highly multipartite, and the interweaving of complex microbial interactions is needed to fully explore the context-dependent aspects of the gut microbiome in many of these systems. I conclude the review by suggesting studies that would help reduce the unsureness of microbial interactions with less-defined herbivore systems and identify how each could provide a path to more robust roles and traits. Keywords Bacteria . Coleoptera . Hemiptera . Lepidoptera . Microbiome . Phytobiome . Phytochemistry
Introduction Insects comprise the largest portion of animal biomass (Baron et al. 2018), and insect herbivores can cause significant impacts on managed and unmanaged ecosystems. Understanding how plant nutritional and defensive traits mediate insect population dynamics is imperative for predicting herbivore outbreaks and manipulating plant traits for management. However, plant-herbivore interactions seldom occur in isolation. A seminal paper by Mcfall-Ngai et al. (2013) outlined the ubiquity of microbial interactions (symbiosis) in the ecology and evolution of animals, and suggested that multiple fields of animal biology would benefit from a greater understanding of how microbiome perturbations alter species interactions. Over the past two decades, there has been greater incorporation, understanding, and acceptance of microorgan* Charles J. Mason [email protected] 1
The Pennsylvania State University Department of Entomology, 501 ASI Building, University Park, PA 16823, USA
isms as key players in interactions among plants and arthropod herbivores (Douglas 2015; Engel and Moran 2013; Hansen and Moran 2014; Moran et al. 2019). However, we still only have a nascent understanding of how plants alter the temporal dynamics, efficacy, and evolution of insect gut
Data Loading...
