Institut Jacques Monod Seminar – Nicolas Rode

Invited by the Courtier Lab, Nicolas Rode, (Centre de Biologie pour la Gestion des Populations, INRAE, Montpellier) will present the Institut Jacques Monod seminar on the theme:

Investigating microbiota-induced plastic tracking of seasonal host fruits in the invasive pest, Drosophila suzukii

Abstract:
Elucidating the genetic and plastic mechanisms by which insect populations can track seasonal variation in their host plants is a long-standing central goal of evolutionary ecology and has major applied implications in agriculture. By sampling natural populations of Drosophila suzukii on different fruits and doing reciprocal transplant experiments, we found that both oviposition preference and offspring performance were higher on original fruits from which populations originated than on alternative fruits. We are currently investigating the role of a flexible and fruit-specific microbiota in driving this pattern. I will present recent data showing that (1) the fungal communities of D. suzukii are more strongly structured among different host fruits than bacterial communities, (2) differences in fungal communities among fruits are maintained over time in the laboratory whereas bacterial communities change over time due to different life stages of D. suzukii preferentially selecting for some bacterial taxa and that (3) different fungal and bacterial communities induce strong plastic responses in both oviposition preference and offspring performance across host fruits. These results help us better understand how the gut microbiota allow D. suzukii to track seasonal changes in host fruits.