Rittik Deb and Ashwin Nair’s paper on the gut bacterial communities of dragonflies is out! We sampled several species of dragonflies from different locations in India, and found that gut bacterial communities varied across host species, location, and season. For some of the dragonflies, we were also able to analyse gut contents, and found that these “generalist predators” eat quite different meals that probably end up introducing distinct bacteria in their guts. So, unlike in most other insects, dragonfly gut bacterial communities seem to be transient and are neutrally assembled (rather than host-selected). Read the paper for more details. Meanwhile, enjoy this beautiful summary of the paper by Pranjal Gupta!
AdaptationLab 