A substantial literature has developed on facultative endosymbionts of insects, often portrayed as having large effects on their hosts, ranging from mutualistic to parasitic. The aphid endosymbiont Regiella insecticola occurs naturally in Myzus persicae and has potential biocontrol applications. Here, we examined the effects of native Regiella in two clones of M. persicae from Australia collected two decades apart, to assess w...

Aphids are pests that cause major economic losses to growers on a global scale. Current management strategies rely heavily on pesticides, but some effective pesticides are being withdrawn, and the efficiency of remaining pesticides is decreasing, as aphids build up resistance. Biological control using predators can provide an important sustainable alternative to pesticides under some circumstances, and the deliberate introduct...

Endosymbionts living within insect cells can modify host fitness and could provide new tools for pest control. The endosymbiont Rickettsiella viridis has been transferred experimentally into the green peach aphid, Myzus persicae, a globally important agricultural pest. This Rickettsiella spreads via vertical and horizontal transmission and induces host fitness costs which could potentially suppress pest populations. Endosymbio...

There is increasing interest in exploring how endosymbionts could be useful in pest control, including in aphids, which can carry a diversity of endosymbionts. Endosymbionts often have a large impact on host traits, and their presence can be self‐sustaining. Identifying useful host‐endosymbiont combinations for pest control is facilitated by the transfer of specific endosymbionts into target species, particularly if the specie...

The susceptibility of insects to rising temperatures has largely been measured by their ability to survive thermal extremes. However, the capacity for maternally inherited endosymbionts to influence insect heat tolerance has been overlooked. Further, while some studies have addressed the impact of heat on traits like fertility, which can decline at temperatures below lethal thermal limits, none have considered the impact of en...

There is increasing interest in the use of endosymbionts in pest control, which will benefit from the identification of endosymbionts from potential donor species for transfer to pest species. Here, we screened for endosymbionts in 123 Australian aphid samples across 32 species using 16S DNA metabarcoding. We then developed a qPCR method to validate the metabarcoding data set and to monitor endosymbiont persistence in aphid cu...

Aedes aegypti mosquito eggs can remain quiescent for many months before hatching, allowing populations to persist through unfavourable conditions. A. aegypti infected with the Wolbachia strain w Mel have been released in tropical and subtropical regions for dengue control. w Mel reduces the viability of quiescent eggs, but this physiological cost might be expected to evolve in natural mosquito populations that frequently exper...

Summary Mosquito‐borne diseases remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Population replacement strategies involving the w Mel strain of Wolbachia are being used widely to control mosquito‐borne diseases. However, these strategies may be influenced by temperature because w Mel is vulnerable to heat. w Mel infections in Drosophila melanogaster are genetically diverse, but few transinfections of w Mel variants have been...

Common fragranced consumer products, such as cleaning supplies and personal care products, emit chiral compounds such as limonene that have been associated with adverse effects on human health. However, those same compounds abound in nature, and at similar concentrations as in products, but without the same apparent adverse human health effects. We investigated whether different types of limonene may elicit different biologica...