symbionts of Magicicada tredecim

Cicadas have an interesting lifestyle, in which they develop underground while feeding on a poor diet of xylem from plant roots. To get the required complement of amino acids, cicadas have bacterial endosymbionts whose sole function is producing nutrients for the host. The genomes of these endosymbionts have interesting evolutionary histories, so we sequenced the symbionts of Magicicada tredecim to further study their evolution.