Enforced specificity of an animal symbiosis.

Insect diversification has been catalyzed by widespread specialization on novel hosts - a process underlying exceptional radiations of phytophagous beetles, lepidopterans, parasitoid wasps, and inordinate lineages of symbionts, predators and other trophic specialists. The strict fidelity of many such interspecies associations is posited to hinge on sensory tuning to host-derived cues, a model supported by studies of neural function in host-specific model species. Here, we investigated the sensory basis of symbiotic interactions between a myrmecophile rove beetle and its single, natural host ant species.