Larvae of leaf-miner moths keep patches of wilting host leaves alive to ensure successful development with the help of bacterial endosymbionts.
“The life cycles of many organisms are constrained by the seasonality of
resources. This is particularly true for leaf-mining
herbivorous insects that use deciduous leaves to
fuel growth and reproduction even beyond leaf fall. Our results suggest
that
an intimate association with bacterial
endosymbionts might be their way of coping with nutritional constraints
to ensure successful
development in an otherwise senescent environment.
We show that the phytophagous leaf-mining moth Phyllonorycter blancardella (Lepidoptera) relies on bacterial endosymbionts, most likely Wolbachia,
to manipulate the physiology of its host plant resulting in the ‘green-island’ phenotype—photosynthetically active green
patches in otherwise senescent leaves—and to
increase its fitness. Curing leaf-miners of their symbiotic partner
resulted
in the absence of green-island formation on leaves,
increased compensatory larval feeding and higher insect mortality. Our
results suggest that bacteria impact green-island
induction through manipulation of cytokinin levels. This is the first
time,
to our knowledge, that insect bacterial
endosymbionts have been associated with plant physiology.” (Kaiser et al. 2010:2311)
