BACKGROUND Primary bacterial endosymbionts of insects (p-endosymbionts) are thought to be undergoing the process of Muller's ratchet where they accrue slightly deleterious mutations due to genetic drift in small populations with negligible recombination rates. If this process were to go unchecked over time, theory predicts mutational meltdown and eventual extinction. Although genome degradation...

The green peach aphid, Myzus persicae, is globally distributed and an important pest of many economically valuable food crops, largely due to its ability transmit plant viruses. Almost all aphids, including M. carry the obligate symbiont Buchnera aphidicola, which provides essential amino acids that aphids cannot obtain from phloem plants themselves. Many also harbor facultative (secondary) end...

In the last decade, influence of microbial symbionts on ecological and physiological traits their hosts has been increasingly recognized. However, most these effects have revealed under laboratory conditions, which oversimplifies complexity factors involved in dynamics symbiotic associations nature. The pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum , forms a complex plant-adapted biotypes, strongly differ pre...

Aims Understanding the contributions of abiotic and biotic conditions to soil microbial diversity, structure, function, remains a central focus in biology biogeochemistry. Here we aim determine how geography host plant identity influence these different components rhizosphere bacterial communities endosymbionts associated with Acacia heterophylla on Réunion island (Mascarene archipelago, Indian...

Darwinian evolution has championed mechanistic models explaining the forces shaping species diversification. This principle however has been challenged by tantalizing observations in many organismal systems where selection seemed to have a minor role. One such a system is the case of endosymbiotic bacteria of insects that present evolutionary features only conceivable if stochastic variation ov...