Still standing: The heat protection delivered by a facultative symbiont to its aphid host is resilient to repeated thermal stress.

ABSTRACT: Insects have evolved diverse strategies to resist extreme high temperatures (EHT). The adaptive value of such strategies has to be evaluated when organisms experience multiple EHT events during their lifetime, as predicted in a changing climate. This is particularly the case for associations with facultative microbial partners involved in insect heat tolerance, the resilience of which to repeated heat stress has never been studied. We compared two artificial lines of the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) differing by the absence or presence of the heat-protective facultative bacterium Serratia symbiotica. We exposed insect nymphs to a varying number of EHT events (between 0 and 3), and recorded fitness parameters. Except survival traits, fitness estimates were affected by the i

SUBMITTER: Tougeron K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10250925 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature