Anna Karenina as a promoter of microbial diversity in the cosmopolitan agricultural pest Zeugodacus cucurbitae (Diptera, Tephritidae).

ABSTRACT: Gut microbial communities are critical in determining the evolutive success of fruit fly phytophagous pests (Diptera, Tephritidae), facilitating their adaptation to suboptimal environmental conditions and to plant allelochemical defences. An important source of variation for the microbial diversity of fruit flies is represented by the crop on which larvae are feeding. However, a "crop effect" is not always the main driver of microbial patterns, and it is often observed in combination with other and less obvious processes. In this work, we aim at verifying if environmental stress and, by extension, changing environmental conditions, can promote microbial diversity in Zeugodacus cucurbitae (Coquillett), a cosmopolitan pest of cucurbit crops. With this objective, 16S rRNA metabarcoding was us

SUBMITTER: Mullens N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10990204 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature