2024/04/01 by Arkadiy I. Garber, Andrés Garcia de la Filia Molina, Isabelle M. Vea +3 · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Entomopathogenic Microorganisms in Pest Control #Insect symbiosis and bacterial influences #Research on scale insects
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/gbe/evae075
openalex publication_date 2024/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Sap-feeding insects often maintain two or more nutritional endosymbionts that act in concert to produce compounds essential for insect survival. Many mealybugs have endosymbionts in a nested configuration: one or two bacterial species reside within the cytoplasm of another bacterium, and together, these bacteria have genomes that encode interdependent sets of genes needed to produce key nutritional molecules. Here, we show that the mealybug Pseudococcus viburni has three endosymbionts, one of which contributes only two unique genes that produce the host nutrition-related molecule chorismate. All three bacterial endosymbionts have tiny genomes, suggesting that they have been coevolving inside their insect host for millions of years.