Entomology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Honey bee workers take on different tasks for the colony as they age. Here, the authors develop a method to extract a descriptor of the individuals’ social networks and show that interaction patterns predict task allocation and distinguish different developmental trajectories.

    • Benjamin Wild
    • , David M. Dormagen
    •  & Tim Landgraf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Germ-free mosquitoes generated with current methods exhibit developmental deficits. Here, the authors use genetically modified bacteria to allow complete decolonisation at any developmental stage of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and show that bacteria support larval development by contributing to folate biosynthesis and enhancing energy storage.

    • Ottavia Romoli
    • , Johan Claes Schönbeck
    •  & Mathilde Gendrin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Connecting genotypes to complex social behaviour is challenging. Taylor et al. use machine learning to show a strong response of caste-associated gene expression to queen loss, wherein individual wasp’s expression profiles become intermediate between queen and worker states, even in the absence of behavioural changes.

    • Benjamin A. Taylor
    • , Alessandro Cini
    •  & Seirian Sumner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gene flow is classically thought to impede local adaptation via parallel evolution. However, a genomic study on Hawaiian crickets from different island populations finds evidence of parallel adaptation to the same lethal parasitoid in spite of strong ongoing gene flow.

    • Xiao Zhang
    • , Jack G. Rayner
    •  & Nathan W. Bailey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biomineral armour is known in a number of diverse creatures but has not previously been observed in insects. Here, the authors report on the discovery and characterization of high-magnesium calcite armour which overlays the exoskeletons of leaf-cutter ants.

    • Hongjie Li
    • , Chang-Yu Sun
    •  & Cameron R. Currie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pesticides could increase bees’ susceptibility to parasites, but the nature of this interaction has been unclear. Here the authors show that the pesticide Clothianidin reduces the wound healing immune response in bees, allowing the ectoparasitic Varroa mites to consume more bee hemolymph and amplify reproduction.

    • Desiderato Annoscia
    • , Gennaro Di Prisco
    •  & Francesco Pennacchio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether or not species—when introduced to a new location—eventually become invasive has been linked to the specices’ capacity to expand its niche. However, here the authors show that the extent of niche shift is smaller in non-invasive than invasive ant species, questioning this established hypothesis.

    • Olivia K. Bates
    • , Sébastien Ollier
    •  & Cleo Bertelsmeier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Song et al. inferred that stridulatory wings and tibial ears co-evolved in a sexual context among crickets, katydids, and their allies, while abdominal ears evolved first in a non-sexual context in grasshoppers, and were later co-opted for courtship. They found little evidence that the evolution of these organs increased lineage diversification.

    • Hojun Song
    • , Olivier Béthoux
    •  & Sabrina Simon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chronic bee paralysis is a viral disease of honey bees with a global distribution, but its epidemiology isn’t well understood. Here, Budge et al., using government honey bee health inspection records from England and Wales, demonstrate the disease is emergent and highlight periodic reintroduction of the disease between years.

    • Giles E. Budge
    • , Nicola K. Simcock
    •  & Steve P. Rushton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hybrid genomes provide a window into the speciation process over time. Here, Chaturvedi et al. use Lycaeides butterflies from hybrid zones of different ages to show that selection and recombination have repeatable effects on hybrid genome composition across timescales.

    • Samridhi Chaturvedi
    • , Lauren K. Lucas
    •  & Zachariah Gompert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Few studies empirically pinpoint how balanced polymorphisms are maintained. “Mérot et al”. identify an inversion polymorphism that is maintained in seaweed fly populations because of antagonistic pleiotropy that mediates a classic life history tradeoff between larval survival and adult reproduction.

    • Claire Mérot
    • , Violaine Llaurens
    •  & Maren Wellenreuther

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Honeybees have a sophisticated system to communicate foraging locations through a “dance”, but they also share food-related olfactory cues. Here, Hasenjager and colleagues use social network analysis to disentangle how foraging information is transmitted through these systems in different contexts.

    • Matthew J. Hasenjager
    • , William Hoppitt
    •  & Ellouise Leadbeater

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pheromones are an essential cue for species recognition and mate selection in many insects including the butterfly Bicyclus anynana. Here the authors show that females with a short social experience of a new male learn preferences for novel pheromone blends, a preference which also occurs in their daughters.

    • Emilie Dion
    • , Li Xian Pui
    •  & Antónia Monteiro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Numerous feathered dinosaurs and early birds have been discovered from the Jurassic and Cretaceous, but the early evolution of feather-feeding insects is not clear. Here, Gao et al. describe a new family of ectoparasitic insects from 10 specimens found associated with feathers in mid-Cretaceous amber.

    • Taiping Gao
    • , Xiangchu Yin
    •  & Dong Ren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microbes can establish mutualistic interactions with plants and insects. Here, Kim et al. show that Streptomyces bacteria can protect strawberry plants and honeybees from pathogens, can move into the plant vascular tissue from soil and from flowers, and are transferred among flowers by the pollinators.

    • Da-Ran Kim
    • , Gyeongjun Cho
    •  & Youn-Sig Kwak

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deep learning has the potential to identify ecological relationships between environment and complex phenotypes that are difficult to quantify. Here, the authors use deep learning to analyse associations among elevation, climate and phenotype across ~2000 moth species in Taiwan.

    • Shipher Wu
    • , Chun-Min Chang
    •  & Sheng-Feng Shen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is thought that fungi protect themselves from predators by the production of toxic compounds. Here, Xu et al. show that a wide range of animal predators avoid feeding on Fusarium fungi, and this depends on fungal production of a bis-naphthopyrone pigment that is not toxic to the predators.

    • Yang Xu
    • , Maria Vinas
    •  & Petr Karlovsky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The praying mantis, a predatory insect, estimates depth via binocular vision. In this way, the animal decides whether prey is within reach. Here, the authors explore the neural correlates of binocular distance estimation and report that individual neurons are tuned to specific locations in 3D space.

    • Ronny Rosner
    • , Joss von Hadeln
    •  & Jenny C. A. Read

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spider silk is widely studied for its structural properties; however, other creatures produce silk that could be of interest. Here, the authors study the properties and structure of Bagworm silk and report it as being extraordinarily strong and tough compared to other known silks.

    • Taiyo Yoshioka
    • , Takuya Tsubota
    •  & Tsunenori Kameda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, Schuldt et al. collate data from two long-term grassland and forest biodiversity experiments to ask how plant diversity facets affect the diversity of higher trophic levels. The results show that positive effects of plant diversity on consumer diversity are mediated by plant structural and functional diversity, and vary across ecosystems and trophic levels.

    • Andreas Schuldt
    • , Anne Ebeling
    •  & Nico Eisenhauer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although male genital shape is known to evolve rapidly in response to sexual selection, relatively little is known about the evolution of female genital shape. Here, the authors show that across onthophagine dung beetles, female genital shape has diverged much more rapidly than male genital shape.

    • Leigh W. Simmons
    •  & John L. Fitzpatrick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Leaf-feeding insect microbiomes could be influenced by the soil, the plant, or a product of the two. Here, the authors conduct a series of experiments to show that an herbivorous insect predominantly acquires its microbiome from the soil rather than the plant, and that these insect microbiomes reflect soil legacies of earlier growing plants.

    • S. Emilia Hannula
    • , Feng Zhu
    •  & T. Martijn Bezemer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The structure and distribution of strain-level diversity in host-associated bacterial communities is largely unexplored. Here, Ellegaard and Engel analyze strain level diversity of the honey bee gut microbiota, showing that bees from the same colony differ in strain but not phylotype composition.

    • Kirsten M. Ellegaard
    •  & Philipp Engel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Numerous microbial symbionts, both commensal and pathogenic, are associated with honey bees. Here, the authors genomically characterize this ‘metagenome’ of the British honey bee, identifying a diversity of commensal microbes as well as known and putative pathogens

    • Tim Regan
    • , Mark W. Barnett
    •  & Tom C. Freeman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cotton bollworm is an important agricultural pest with widespread resistance to insecticides. Here Wang et al. identifies CYP6AEs from cotton bollworm involved in detoxifying plant toxins and chemical insecticides through the CRISPR-Cas9-based reverse genetics approach in conjunction with in vitro metabolism.

    • Huidong Wang
    • , Yu Shi
    •  & Yidong Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Evidence for a parasitic lifestyle in extinct species tends to be indirect. Here, the authors provide direct evidence through X-ray examination of approximately 30–40 million year old fossil fly pupae, revealing 55 parasitation events by four newly described wasp species.

    • Thomas van de Kamp
    • , Achim H. Schwermann
    •  & Lars Krogmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Major royal jelly protein 1 (MRJP1) is the most abundant glycoprotein in royal jelly (RJ). Here the authors isolated MRJP1 from RJ and determined the 2.65 Å resolution crystal structure of the 16-molecule oligomer, which also contained 24-methylenecholesterol and apisimin bound to MRJP1.

    • Wenli Tian
    • , Min Li
    •  & Zhongzhou Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How do social insect colonies regulate tasks after the developmental stage and in response to changing environments? Here, Crall et al. use automated individual tracking to reveal that task switching after a major colony disturbance helps to maintain collective foraging performance in bumble bees.

    • James D. Crall
    • , Nick Gravish
    •  & Stacey A. Combes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The phylogeny of beetles, which represent ~25% of known extant animal species, has been a challenge to resolve. Here, Zhang et al. infer a time-calibrated phylogeny for Coleoptera based on 95 protein-coding genes in 373 species and suggest an association between the hyperdiversification of beetles and the rise of angiosperms.

    • Shao-Qian Zhang
    • , Li-Heng Che
    •  & Peng Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Africanized honey bees (AHB) are notoriously aggressive, but in Puerto Rico they have a ‘gentle’ phenotype. Here, Avalos et al. show that there has been a soft selective sweep at several loci in the Puerto Rican AHB population and suggest a role in the rapid evolution of gentle behaviour.

    • Arian Avalos
    • , Hailin Pan
    •  & Guojie Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The range of odours that an insect can detect depends on its olfactory receptors. Here, the authors functionally characterize the olfactory receptor repertoire of the mothSpodoptera littoralis using the Drosophilaempty neuron system and reconstruct the evolution of these receptors in the Lepidoptera.

    • Arthur de Fouchier
    • , William B. Walker III
    •  & Emmanuelle Jacquin-Joly

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While the organization of ants within their nest is key for colony function, it remains unknown how ants navigate this dark subterranean environment. Here, Heymanet al. use a series of behavioral tests, chemical analyses, and machine learning to identify chemical landmarks that ants use to distinguish between nest areas.

    • Yael Heyman
    • , Noam Shental
    •  & Ofer Feinerman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although common in ants and termites, worker differentiation into physical castes is rare in social bees and unknown in wasps. Here, Grüter and colleagues find a guard caste in ten species of stingless bees and show that the evolution of the guard caste is associated with parasitization by robber bees.

    • Christoph Grüter
    • , Francisca H. I. D. Segers
    •  & Eduardo A. B. Almeida

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The insect IMD signalling pathway detects invading pathogens. Here the authors show that ticks have an alternative IMD system that lacks peptidoglycan receptors, IMD and FADD, and is instead reliant on interaction of the E3 ligase XIAP with the E2 conjugating enzyme Bendless.

    • Dana K. Shaw
    • , Xiaowei Wang
    •  & Joao H. F. Pedra

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social insects are commonly parasitized by beetles that live inside colonies and consume nest resources or even the brood. Here, Yamamotoet al. present fossil evidence that social parasitism by beetles dates back at least 99 million years—contemporaneous with the earliest fossil indications of ant and termite eusociality.

    • Shûhei Yamamoto
    • , Munetoshi Maruyama
    •  & Joseph Parker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Invasive insects impose many economic costs, for example by consuming crops and spreading disease. Here, Bradshaw et al. compile a database of the costs of invasive insects and conservatively estimate that the yearly global cost (in 2014-equivalent US dollars) is at least $70 billion for goods and services and $6.9 billion for human health.

    • Corey J. A. Bradshaw
    • , Boris Leroy
    •  & Franck Courchamp

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