I love how delightfully diabolical evolution can be.

A new article in Annual Review of Entomology is about the plant pathogens that are vectored between plants by herbivorous insects. These plant pathogens invade plant tissues and make plants sick. To get between plants they hitch a ride inside plant-feeding insects. The healthier the insect the more plants it will feed on.

So, what do the microbes do? They manufacture chemicals that make their insect hosts stronger. Several ways that they do this have been discovered "from balancing a nutritionally deficient diet" to "upgrading its defensive biochemistry against natural enemies."

Wild!

"Plant Pathogens Moonlighting as Beneficial Insect Symbionts" by
Aileen Berasategui and Hassan Salem

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-ento-121423-013411

#entomology #SpeciesInteractions #mutualism #ecology #PlantPathogens #Herbivory #insects