Bacterial Semiochemicals and Transkingdom Interactions with Insects and Plants

Abstract

A peculiar feature of all living beings is their capability to communicate. With the discovery of the quorum sensing phenomenon in bioluminescent bacteria in the late 1960s, it became clear that intraspecies and interspecies communications and social behaviors also occur in simple microorganisms such as bacteria. However, at that time, it was difficult to imagine how such small organisms—invisible to the naked eye—could influence the behavior and wellbeing of the larger, more complex and visible organisms they colonize. Now that we know this information, the challenge is to identify the myriad of bacterial chemical signals and communication networks that regulate the life of what can be defined, in a whole, as a meta-organism. In this review, we described the transkingdom crosstalk between bacteria, insects, and plants from an ecological perspective, providing some paradigmatic examples. Second, we reviewed what is known about the genetic and biochemical bases of the bacterial chemical communication with other organisms and how explore the semiochemical potential of a bacterium can be explored. Finally, we illustrated how bacterial semiochemicals managing the transkingdom communication may be exploited from a biotechnological point of view.

Structure and Dynamics of the Gut Bacterial Community Across the Developmental Stages of the Coffee Berry Borer, Hypothenemus hampei

“…Mutualistic bacteria and fungi provide advantageous services to insect hosts by facilitating the digestion of recalcitrant food (Genta et al, 2006;Brune, 2014), providing essential nutrients (Feng et al, 2019), promoting immunity or protection against pathogens, parasites, or predators (Koch and Schmid-Hempel, 2011;Muhammad et al, 2019), contributing to interand intraspecific communication (Engl and Kaltenpoth, 2018;Calcagnile et al, 2019), and modulating the interaction of phytophagous insects with host plants (Acevedo et al, 2017). This complex mutualistic relationship between microbial symbionts and insect hosts has likely played a special role in the adaptive radiation and diversification of phytophagous insect species due to the potential microbial influence on host plantassociated ecological opportunity and divergent natural selection (Janson et al, 2008).…”

From Insect Pheromones to Mating Disruption

“…[511]. Achieving a deeper understanding of the interplay between tephritid, their microbiota and host plants will shed new light on the multifaceted field of trans-kingdom communication [512] and will provide novel targets to be exploited for pest management.…”

Tephritid Fruit Fly Semiochemicals: Current Knowledge and Future Perspectives

“…[ 513 ]. Achieving a deeper understanding of the interplay between tephritid, their microbiota and host plants will shed new light on the multifaceted field of trans-kingdom communication [ 514 ] and will provide novel targets to be exploited for pest management.…”