Nutritional symbionts enhance structural defence against predation and fungal infection in a grain pest beetle.

ABSTRACT: Many insects benefit from bacterial symbionts that provide essential nutrients and thereby extend the hosts' adaptive potential and their ability to cope with challenging environments. However, the implications of nutritional symbioses for the hosts' defence against natural enemies remain largely unstudied. Here, we investigated whether the cuticle-enhancing nutritional symbiosis of the saw-toothed grain beetle Oryzaephilus surinamensis confers protection against predation and fungal infection. We exposed age-defined symbiotic and symbiont-depleted (aposymbiotic) beetles to two antagonists that must actively penetrate the cuticle for a successful attack: wolf spiders (Lycosidae) and the fungal entomopathogen Beauveria bassiana. While young beetles suffered from high predation and fungal in

SUBMITTER: Kanyile SN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8778805 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature