The Significance of Genetic Relatedness and Nest Sharing on the Worker-Worker Similarity of Gut Bacterial Microbiome and Cuticular Hydrocarbon Profile in a Sweat Bee.

The cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profile and the gut microbiome (GM) are crucial traits which have a significant impact on the life of bees. In honey bees, the CHC profile and the GM interact finely through trophallaxis, such that the characteristics of the GM are partially defined by the chemical recognition among sisters. However, most of the known primitively eusocial bees show simpler social traits, including moderate genetic relatedness among colony members, often due to workers' nest drifting or dispersal, and lack of trophallaxis.

Correction: Aedes albopictus microbiota: Differences between wild and mass-reared immatures do not suggest negative impacts from a diet based on black soldier fly larvae and fish food.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Morphological and molecular insights into the diversity of biting midges from a heavily infested Mediterranean area.

The genus Skuse (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) are blood-sucking midges known to pester humans and domestic animals. In certain Mediterranean areas, midges occur in large numbers during summer and limit the use of recreational areas, also raising serious health and social concerns. Despite such impact, the diversity and distribution of in Maremma Regional Park (Tuscany Region, Italy), a heavily infested area, is not well known, and neither molecular nor detailed morphological studies exist.

Aedes albopictus microbiota: Differences between wild and mass-reared immatures do not suggest negative impacts from a diet based on black soldier fly larvae and fish food.

The "Sterile Insect Technique" (SIT), a promising method to control Aedes albopictus, the Asian tiger mosquito, is gaining increasing interest. Recently, the role of microbiota in mosquito fitness received attention, but the link between microbiota and larval diet in mass rearing programs for SIT remains largely unexplored. We characterized the microbiota of four larval instars, pupae and eggs of non-wild (NW) lab-reared Ae.

Bacterial gut microbiomes of aculeate brood parasites overlap with their aculeate hosts', but have higher diversity and specialization.

Despite growing interest in gut microbiomes of aculeate Hymenoptera, research so far focused on social bees, wasps, and ants, whereas non-social taxa and their brood parasites have not received much attention. Brood parasitism, however, allows to distinguish between microbiome components horizontally transmitted by spill-over from the host with such inherited through vertical transmission by mothers. Here, we studied the bacterial gut microbiome of adults in seven aculeate species in four brood parasite-host systems: two bee-mutillid (host-parasitoid) systems, one halictid bee-cuckoo bee system, and one wasp-chrysidid cuckoo wasp system.

Host-trailing satellite flight behaviour is associated with greater investment in peripheral visual sensory system in miltogrammine flies.

Insect sensory systems are the subjects of different selective pressures that shape their morphology. In many species of the flesh fly subfamily Miltogramminae (Diptera: Sarcophagidae) that are kleptoparasitic on bees and wasps, females perch on objects close to the host nests and, once a returning host is detected, they follow it in flight at a fixed distance behind until reaching the nest. We hypothesized that such satellite (SAT) flight behaviour, which implies a finely coordinated trailing flight, is associated with an improved visual system, compared to species adopting other, non-satellite (NON-SAT) strategies.

A sting affair: A global quantitative exploration of bee, wasp and ant hosts of velvet ants.

The vast majority of species of velvet ants (Hymenoptera: Aculeata: Mutillidae) are ectoparasitoids of immature stages of other aculeate Hymenoptera (bees, wasps and ants). Due to their cryptic, furtive behaviour at the host nesting sites, however, even basic information on their biology, like host use diversity, is still unknown for entire subfamilies, and the known information, scattered in over two centuries of published studies, is potentially hiding tendencies to host specialization across velvet ant lineages. In this review, based on 305 host associations spanning 132 species in 49 genera and 10 main lineages (tribes/subfamilies), we explored patterns of host use in velvet ants.