Humidity - The overlooked variable in the thermal biology of mosquito-borne disease.

Vector-borne diseases cause significant financial and human loss, with billions of dollars spent on control. Arthropod vectors experience a complex suite of environmental factors that affect fitness, population growth and species interactions across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Temperature and water availability are two of the most important abiotic variables influencing their distributions and abundances.

Microbiomes of Blood-Feeding Triatomines in the Context of Their Predatory Relatives and the Environment.

The importance of gut microbiomes has become generally recognized in vector biology. This study addresses microbiome signatures in North American species of public health significance (vectors of Trypanosoma cruzi) linked to their blood-feeding strategy and the natural habitat. To place the -associated microbiomes within a complex evolutionary and ecological context, we sampled sympatric populations, related predatory reduviids, unrelated ticks, and environmental material from vertebrate nests where these arthropods reside.

Microbiome Structure of a Wild Community along Tropical Elevational Gradients and Comparison to Laboratory Lines.

Variation along environmental gradients in host-associated microbial communities is not well understood compared to free-living microbial communities. Because elevational gradients may serve as natural proxies for climate change, understanding patterns along these gradients can inform our understanding of the threats hosts and their symbiotic microbes face in a warming world. In this study, we analyzed bacterial microbiomes from pupae and adults of four species native to Australian tropical rainforests.

DROP: Molecular voucher database for identification of Drosophila parasitoids.

Molecular identification is increasingly used to speed up biodiversity surveys and laboratory experiments. However, many groups of organisms cannot be reliably identified using standard databases such as GenBank or BOLD due to lack of sequenced voucher specimens identified by experts. Sometimes a large number of sequences are available, but with too many errors to allow identification.

Ontogeny, species identity, and environment dominate microbiome dynamics in wild populations of kissing bugs (Triatominae).

Background: Kissing bugs (Triatominae) are blood-feeding insects best known as the vectors of Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas' disease. Considering the high epidemiological relevance of these vectors, their biology and bacterial symbiosis remains surprisingly understudied. While previous investigations revealed generally low individual complexity but high among-individual variability of the triatomine microbiomes, any consistent microbiome determinants have not yet been identified across multiple Triatominae species.

Metacommunity theory for transmission of heritable symbionts within insect communities.

Microbial organisms are ubiquitous in nature and often form communities closely associated with their host, referred to as the microbiome. The microbiome has strong influence on species interactions, but microbiome studies rarely take interactions between hosts into account, and network interaction studies rarely consider microbiomes. Here, we propose to use metacommunity theory as a framework to unify research on microbiomes and host communities by considering host insects and their microbes as discretely defined "communities of communities" linked by dispersal (transmission) through biotic interactions.