John Teodosio / Biology / Faculty Mentor: Alison Ravenscraft
With the growing global population, agriculture has become more important than ever. There has been increased interest in understanding agricultural pests and how to control them to protect crop yield. Several hemipteran bug species, such as Leptoglossus phyllopus, engage in promiscuous symbiotic association with the free-living soil bacteria- Caballeronia. In this study, we investigated how bug population density affects symbiont abundance in soil and subsequent acquisition by future generations. Here, we infected freshly molted nymphs with a Caballeronia strain and reared them to adulthood in soil microcosm enclosures at different bug densities. The relative abundance of the Caballeronia in each treatment enclosure was quantified using qPCR and then compared. We expect the symbiont density in the enclosures with a higher bug population to have significantly more symbiont abundance in soil than the low-density treatments. Previous work has shown that the symbiont can escape the bugs through their feces. If L. phyllopus migrates to a new area and transmits the symbiont to the soil, this could cause a pest boom because the next generation of insects could more easily acquire the symbiont.
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