Scoring introducted microbes for their interaction with plant hosts in a network system [picture from Toju et al. (2020)] We are living in a world full of microbes. These tiny critters affect all aspects of our life. One of the holy grails in the microbiology field is to construct a... [Read More]

100 million years ago, a group of bark beetles started to farm their fungal symbionts and formed a tight relationship with the fungal crops. Such lifeform between bark beetles and their fungi is termed ambrosia symbiosis, and therefore “ambrosia” beetles and “ambrosia” fungi for these critters involved. [Read More]

The relationships between wood-boring ambrosia beetles and the fungi which they farm as their sole source of food have long been of interest to anyone concerned with maintaining healthy forests. With millions of years of history between the insects and their fungi, it has been generally assumed that each member... [Read More]

Most bark beetles are associated with hundreds, if not thousands, of microbes during their life, often with a few dominant taxa at a time. One of the fungal genus Geosmithia, is globally very diverse and abundant, and dominantes a ubiquitous but under studied niche — the twig-infesting / phloem-feeding bark... [Read More]