Publications by authors named "Abbi St Clair"
Article Synopsis
- Insects face a mix of beneficial and harmful bacteria in their guts, with certain stressors causing normally harmless bacteria to become pathogenic.
- A study analyzed Serratia strains from healthy fall armyworm larvae, revealing significant variation in their pathogenicity when injected, with some strains causing rapid mortality while others had little effect.
- The presence of resistant maize genotypes increased the mortality rate from Serratia, suggesting that plant defenses can help trigger pathogenic infections in insects by allowing harmful bacteria to invade their bodies.
Animals have ubiquitous associations with microorganisms, but microbial community composition and population dynamics can vary depending upon many environmental factors, including diet. The bacterial communities present in caterpillar (Lepidoptera) guts are highly variable, even among individuals of a species. Across lepidopteran species, it is unclear if the variation in their gut bacterial communities is due to ingested bacteria with diets or responses of gut bacteria to their diet.
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