Membership robustness but structural change of the native gut microbiota of bumble bees upon systemic immune induction.

Unlabelled: Understanding factors influencing the composition and maintenance of beneficial host-associated microbial communities is central to understanding their ecological, evolutionary, and health consequences for hosts. Host immunity is often implicated as a regulator of these microbiota, but immunity may also play a disruptive role, with responses to infection perturbing beneficial communities. Such effects may be more prominent from innate immune responses, with more rapid-acting and often non-specific components, compared to adaptive responses.

Sexually antagonistic coevolution of the male nuptial gift and female feeding behaviour in decorated crickets.

The evolution of nuptial gifts has traditionally been considered a harmonious affair, providing benefits to both mating partners. There is growing evidence, however, that receiving a nuptial gift can be actively detrimental to the female. In decorated crickets (), males produce a gelatinous spermatophylax that enhances sperm transfer but provides little nutritional benefit and hinders female post-copulatory mate choice.

Investigating the influence of diet diversity on infection outcomes in a bumble bee () and microsporidian () host-pathogen system.

Diet can have an array of both direct and indirect effects on an organism's health and fitness, which can influence the outcomes of host-pathogen interactions. Land use changes, which could impact diet quantity and quality, have imposed foraging stress on important natural and agricultural pollinators. Diet related stress could exacerbate existing negative impacts of pathogen infection.

A simulated natural heatwave perturbs bumblebee immunity and resistance to infection.

As a consequence of ongoing climate change, heatwaves are predicted to increase in frequency, intensity, and duration in many regions. Such extreme events can shift organisms from thermal optima for physiology and behaviour, with the thermal stress hypothesis predicting reduced performance at temperatures where the maintenance of biological functions is energetically costly. Performance includes the ability to resist biotic stressors, including infectious diseases, with increased exposure to extreme temperatures having the potential to synergise with parasite infection.

Experimental evolution under varying sex ratio and behavioral plasticity in response to perceived competitive environment independently affect calling effort in male crickets.

The operational sex ratio (OSR) is a key component influencing the magnitude of sexual selection driving the evolution of male sexual traits, but males often also retain the ability to plastically modulate trait expression depending on the current environment. Here we employed an experimental evolution approach to determine whether the OSR affects the evolution of male calling effort in decorated crickets, a costly sexual trait, and whether plasticity in calling effort is altered by the OSR under which males have evolved. Calling effort of males from 2 selection regimes maintained at different OSRs over 18-20 generations (male vs.