476: Bamboo Breakdown Benefits Beetle Babies

This episode: Beetles inoculate bamboo with a fungus that
consumes the bamboo sugars to feed the beetle larvae!


Download Episode (7.7 MB, 11.2 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Saccharomyces cerevisiae virus L-BC (La)


News item


Video: Lizard beetle laying its egg


Takeaways





The structural polymers that make up plants, such as
cellulose, can be difficult for many organisms to digest.
Some kinds of bacteria and fungi can do it, and some
animals (cows, pandas, termites) partner with these
microbes to be able to eat otherwise indigestible plant
material. This includes insects such as leaf-cutter ants
that farm external gardens of microbes, providing them
plant material and then eating the resulting microbial
growth.

In this study, the lizard beetle lays its eggs in bamboo
and inoculates the walls of the bamboo with a fungus that
provides food to the larvae. Chemical analyses suggest that
the fungus only consumes the simple sugars in the bamboo
rather than breaking down the tougher polymers, which
raises questions about the evolution of this interaction.


 
Journal Paper:
Toki W, Aoki D. 2021. Nutritional resources of the yeast
symbiont cultivated by the lizard beetle Doubledaya
bucculenta in bamboos. Sci Rep 11:19208.

 


Other interesting stories:



Using bacteria to detect and target colon cancer for
imaging (paper)

Filters made from kombucha cultures could work better
than synthetic types




 


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dot com. Thanks for listening!


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