Kruttika’s work testing the impact of butterfly caterpillar microbiomes on growth and survival is published! This was a major collaborative effort with Krushnamegh Kunte, and very new kind of work for our lab. The results were puzzling because unlike patterns from other insects, butterflies seem to be just fine without their bacteria. But in conjunction with Rittik and Ashwin’s recent results with dragonflies, it seems that we’ve uncovered one end of the spectrum of host-microbe interactions. The end that spells “meh!” rather than “I need you”. Here’s a cartoon summary of the work by Kruttika and Shreya. Also read a lay summary here; or read the paper for more details!
AdaptationLab 