Understanding the coevolution of hosts and parasites is a long‐standing goal of
evolutionary biology. There is a well‐developed theoretical framework to describe the …

Highlights•Multiple strains of the heritable bacterium, Spiroplasma, protect insects against
infection by natural enemies.•Defensive capabilities are broad, impacting parasitic …

Toxin cargo genes are often horizontally transferred by phages between bacterial species
and are known to play an important role in the evolution of bacterial pathogenesis. Here, we …

Bacterial endosymbionts induce dramatic phenotypes in their arthropod hosts, including
cytoplasmic incompatibility, feminization, parthenogenesis, male killing, parasitoid defense …

Hemolymph has long been recognized as a key mediator of nutritional and immunological
homeostasis in insects, with the tacit understanding that hemolymph is a hostile environment …

While largely neglected over decades during which adaptive immunity captured most of the
attention, innate immune mechanisms have now become central to our understanding of …

An alternative biological synthesis is presented that conceptualizes evolutionary biology as
an epiphenomenon of integrated self-referential information management. Since all …

Insect host–parasitoid interactions abound in nature and are characterized by a high degree
of host specialization. In addition to their behavioral and immune defenses, many host …

Highlights•Recent HGT detection workflows enable large-scale studies of HGT among
eukaryotes.•At least 14 insect species belonging to 6 orders contain plant-derived …

Heritable, facultative symbionts are common in arthropods, often functioning in host defence.
Despite moderately reduced genomes, facultative symbionts retain evolutionary potential …