Modeling trophic dependencies and exchanges among insects' bacterial symbionts in a host-simulated environment.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Individual organisms are linked to their communities and ecosystems via metabolic activities. Metabolic exchanges and co-dependencies have long been suggested to have a pivotal role in determining community structure. In phloem-feeding insects such metabolic interactions with bacteria enable complementation of their deprived nutrition. The phloem-feeding whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) harbors an obligatory symbiotic bacterium, as well as varying combinations of facultative symbionts. This well-defined bacterial community in B. tabaci serves here as a case study for a comprehensive and systematic survey of metabolic interactions within the bacterial community and their associations with documented occurrences of bacterial combinations. We first reconstru

SUBMITTER: Opatovsky I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5970531 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature