Consequences of symbiont co-infections for insect host phenotypes

1. Most animals host communities of symbiotic bacteria. In insects, these symbionts may have particularly intimate interactions with their hosts: many are intracellular and can play important roles in host ecology and evolution, including protection against natural enemies.
2. We investigated how interactions between different species or strains of endosymbiotic bacteria within an aphid host influence the outcome of symbiosis for both symbiont and host.
3. We first asked whether different combinations of facultative symbiont species or strains can exist in stable co-infections. We then investigated whether the benefits that facultative bacteria confer on their hosts (protection against natural enemies) are enhanced, reduced or unaltered by the presence of a co-infecting symbiont. We asked this both for co-infecting symbionts that confer different phenotypes on their hosts (protection against fungal pathogens vs. parasitoid wasps) and symbionts with overlapping functions. Finally, we i...