Successful colonization of empty habitat patches depends both on the capacity of a species to reach the patch and its ability to establish and persist. Getting better insights into the various factors that affect colonization success is especially relevant in the context of restoration projects that aim at restoring biodiversity in newly created habitats like afforestation. While it is generally known that soil microbial communities play a key role in forest ecosystems, it remains largely unknown how they recover in recently restored forests on former agricultural land. Here, we used next-generation sequencing to investigate how spatial isolation and abiotic conditions affected the diversity and composition of ectomycorrhizal fungal communities in recent forest stands. Soil samples and roots of Quercus robur were sampled in ancient forest stands and recent stands both adjacent and spatially isolated from the ancient stands. Our results showed that ectomycorrhizal fungal community composition was affected by a combination of isolation and local soil conditions. Although communities of recently restored forest stands more resembled those of ancient stands when they immediately bordered ancient forest, there were still significant differences in community composition, most likely as a result of differences in edaphic conditions. Isolated stands had a significantly lower diversity and were mainly colonized by highly dispersive species. Overall, these results indicate that ectomycorrhizal fungal communities may develop faster in recent forest stands connected to ancient forest than in isolated stands, and that isolated stands may remain impoverished for many decades or even for indeterminate time.
While contemporary changes in feeding preferences have been documented in phytophagous insects, the mechanisms behind these processes remain to be fully clarified. In this context, the insect gut microbiome plays a central role in adaptation to novel host plants. The cucurbit frugivorous fruit fly Zeugodacus cucurbitae (Diptera, Tephritidae) has occasionally been reported on "unconventional" host plants from different families, including Solanaceae. In this study, we focus on wild parental (F 0 ) adults and semiwild first filial (F 1 ) larvae of Z. cucurbitae from multiple sites in La Réunion and explore how the gut microbiome composition changes when this fly is feeding on a noncucurbit host (Solanum melongena). Our analyses show nonobvious gut microbiome responses following the F 0 -F host shift and the 1 importance of not just diet but also local effects, which heavily affected the diversity and composition of microbiomes. We identified the main bacterial genera responsible for differences between treatments. These data further stress the importance of a careful approach when drawing general conclusions based on laboratory populations or inadequately replicated field samples.
We examined the phylogeny and intrageneric classification of eristaline hoverfly genera from the Afrotropical Region using mitochondrial genomes. Genome skimming was used to obtain (nearly) full mtDNA and nuclear rDNA (18S, 28S) genomes of 120 museum vouchers from eight genera and 98 species. Phylogenetic reconstructions of mitogenomes and mitogenomes + nuclear rDNA yielded comparable phylogenies while that of rDNA only resulted in poorly resolved phylogenies. Phylogenetic analyses focused on six genera and supported the monophyly of the genera Chasmomma Bezzi, Eristalinus Rondani, Mesembrius Rondani and Syritta Le Peletier & Serville, whereas Simoides Loew was not monophyletic and rendered Phytomia Guérin‐Méneville paraphyletic. We therefore synonymize Simoides with Phytomia. Within Chasmomma, two species‐groups that differ in the colour and the shape of the hind femora (Chasmomma femoratum and Chasmomma nigrum species‐groups) were supported. Within Eristalinus, the monophyly of the subgenera Merodonoides Curran and Eristalodes Mik was supported, but not of the subgenus Eristalinus Rondani. Within Syritta, the monophyly of three out of the five species‐groups tested was rejected. This approach illustrates the importance of integrative and iterative approaches in taxonomy and shows that genomic data may not only clarify the systematic relationships among hoverfly genera and species, but also offer perspectives into the evolution of morphological and ecological variation within the family.
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