Feeding on living or dead plant material is widespread in insects. Seminal work on termites
and aphids has provided profound insights into the critical nutritional role that microbes play …

The fossil record allows a unique glimpse into the evolutionary history of organisms living on
Earth today. We discovered a specimen of the stem group ant† Gerontoformica gracilis …

Highlights•Accounting for context-dependent alterations in microbial interaction networks is
key for accurate microbiome modeling.•Integration of multi-omics data into predictive …

Gut microbiomes are increasingly recognized for mediating diverse biological aspects of
their hosts, including complex behavioral phenotypes. Although many studies have reported …

Sustaining beneficial gut symbioses presents a major challenge for animals, including
holometabolous insects. Social insects may meet such challenges through partner fidelity …

Lactic acid bacteria could positively affect the health of honey bees, including nutritional
supplementation, immune system development and pathogen colonization resistance …

Mutualistic coevolution can be mediated by vertical transmission of symbionts between host
generations. Termites host complex gut bacterial communities with evolutionary histories …

ABSTRACT A multitude of factors affect the assemblies of complex microbial communities
associated with animal hosts, with implications for community flexibility, resilience, and long …

Social insects exhibit a high degree of intraspecific behavioral variation. Moreover, they
often harbor specialized microbial communities in their gut. Recent studies suggest that …

In this chapter we present the current state of research on the contribution of the gut
microbiome to the degradation of dietary sources of carbon in three social insects: termites …