by Nicole Gerardo

Members (and former members) of the Gerardo Lab have recently published two commentaries related to symbiosis.

Ben Parker and I wrote a piece for a symbiosis-centric of issue of Current Opinions in Insect Science on the mechanisms underlying symbiont-conferred protection. While focusing on systems in which insects are protected by microbes against pathogens and parasites and systems in which insects are less able to vector pathogens and parasites when the vectors harbor particular symbionts, the principles apply to non-insect systems as well. From an ecological perspective, symbiont-conferred protection is akin to forms of direct competition. Symbionts can directly harm the invader through production of toxins, may compete with the invader for resources, or may alter the host immune systems such that it hampers the persistence of the invader.

Justine Garcia developed a review piece that she originally wrote as part of her graduate qualifying exam onto a commentary on the need to consider the ecological and evolutionary underpinnings of symbiosis from the perspective of the symbiont. What are the costs and benefits of host association for the symbiont? This is particularly informative for environmentally acquired symbionts where the microbes can persist in non-host environments. The articles is available in Frontiers in Microbiology.

by Nicole Gerardo

Last week, I had the opportunity to see Alice Laughton (former postdoc in the lab) and Ben Parker (former grad student) at the European Congress of Entomology in York, England. Yes, it was good to catch up. Yes, it was great to see the development of their scientific pursuits. But, really, the best part was scones and tea with two friends. Alice, sorry to put the butter or before the jam. I will get it right next time (maybe).

Ben is now an NSF-funded postdoc in Charles Godfray’s group at Oxford.

Alice is a postdoc in Rob Knell’s group at Queen Mary University of London.

by The Lab

At our first lab meeting following the Evolution conference, we gave an overview of some of our favorite talks. These included…

• Todd Castoe‘s talk on snake genomics. Did you know snake blood is thick with fat after a meal? There genomes reflect the evolutionary changes required for an extraordinary metabolism.
• Jeff Leips‘ talk on finding the genetic basis of life-history traits like life span and fecundity in Drosophila. Using GWAS to identify candidate genes and RNAi to validate their influence on a trait, they showed evidence for the mutation accumulation theory of ageing.
• Jaideep Joshi created an agent based model illustrating the evolution of altruism in a spatially explicit environment with ‘cooperators’ and ‘defectors.’ This could be a new and interesting way to teach Hamilton’s rule in the classroom.