The high energetic demand of parental care requires parents to direct their resources towards the support of existing offspring rather than investing into the production of additional young. However, how such a resource flow is channelled appropriately is poorly understood. In this study, we provide the first comprehensive analysis of the physiological mechanisms coordinating parental and mating effort in an insect exhibiting biparental care. We show a hormone-mediated infertility in female burying beetles during the...

Among their responses to microbial infection, plants deploy an arsenal of antibiotic natural products. While these historically have been identified on the basis of their antibiotic activity in vitro, this leaves open the question of their relevance to defense in planta. The vast majority of such natural products from the important crop plant rice (Oryza sativa) are diterpenoids whose biosynthesis proceeds via either ent- or syncopalyl diphosphate (CPP) intermediates, and which were isolated on the...

Symbiotic relationships may provide organisms with key innovations that aid in the establishment of new niches. For example, during oviposition, some species of parasitoid wasps, whose larvae develop inside the bodies of other insects, inject polydnaviruses into their hosts. These symbiotic viruses disrupt host immune responses, allowing the parasitoid’s progeny to survive. Here, we show that symbiotic polydnaviruses also have a downside to the parasitoid’s progeny by initiating a multi-trophic chain of interactions that reveals...

Flower signaling and orientation are key characteristics, which determine a flower’s pollinator guild. However, many flowers actively move during their daily cycle, changing both their detectability and accessibility to pollinators. The flowers of the wild tobacco Nicotiana attenuata orientate their corolla upwards at sunset and downwards after sunrise. Here, we investigated the effect of different flower orientations on a major pollinator of N. attenuata, the hawkmoth Manduca sexta. We found that although flower orientation influenced...

Microbial mutualistic symbiosis is increasingly recognised as a hidden driving force in the ecology of plant–insect interactions. Although plant‐associated and herbivore‐associated symbionts clearly affect interactions between plants and herbivores, the effects of symbionts associated with higher trophic levels has been largely overlooked. At the third‐trophic level, parasitic wasps are a common group of insects that can inject symbiotic viruses (polydnaviruses) and venom into their herbivorous hosts to support parasitoid offspring development. Here, we show that...

The increasing resistance of human pathogens severely limits the efficacy of antibiotics in medicine, yet many animals, including solitary beewolf wasps, successfully engage in defensive alliances with antibiotic-producing bacteria for millions of years. Here, we report on the in situ production of 49 derivatives belonging to three antibiotic compound classes (45 piericidin derivatives, 3 streptochlorin derivatives, and nigericin) by the symbionts of 25 beewolf host species and subspecies, spanning 68 million years of evolution. Despite...

Endophytic insects provide the textbook examples of herbivores that manipulate their host plant's physiology, putatively altering source/sink relationships by transferring cytokinins (CK) to create 'green islands' that increase the nutritional value of infested tissues. However, unambiguous demonstrations of CK transfer are lacking. Here we show that feeding by the free-living herbivore Tupiocoris notatus on Nicotiana attenuata is characterized by stable nutrient levels, increased CK levels and alterations in CK-related transcript levels in attacked leaves, in...