ArticleMolecular ecology2026
Spatial and Temporal Structure of Environmentally-Acquired Caballeronia Symbionts of a Leaffooted Bug.
Article in Molecular ecology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Species-Specific Bacterial Associations Emerge From Stochastically Assembled Microbiomes in Northeastern American Fireflies.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Leaffooted bugs enrich local soil with their horizontally acquired symbiont.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Acquisition of an obligate environmental symbiont may be limited in the arboreal environment.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2025Article
- Temperature influences outcomes of an environmentally acquired symbiosis.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- The facultative intracellular symbiontFrontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Animals that acquire beneficial microbial symbionts from their environment risk acquiring a sub-optimal partner, or no partner at all. The leaffooted bug Leptoglossus zonatus (Coreidae) acquires its Caballeronia (Burkholderiaceae) bacterial symbiont from the environment, presumably from local soil. Despite large contributions to the bug's fitness, young nymphs must re-acquire the symbiont every generation. To understand how the environmental reservoir of symbiont lineages shapes the insect's biology, we examined the role of space and time in the distribution of Burkholderia sensu lato (including Caballeronia) strains in bugs and soils. We compared samples within trees, within plots, within cities and among different cities in the Southwest USA. We also sampled Caballeronia in L. zonatus within a pomegranate orchard over 2 years. We found high Caballeronia diversity both in soils (32 lineages) and in bugs (29 lineages). Caballeronia lineages were spatially structured among soils and bugs, with fewer shared as distance between samples increased. Where a bug develops, therefore, influences the symbiont strain it acquires, consistent with a process of passive spatial turnover. Also, while some Caballeronia subclade frequencies in bugs approximated frequencies in soils, the Coreiodea-associated subclade of Caballeronia (SBE𝛿) was enriched in bugs. There was only slight turnover of strains in insects over time, suggesting that geographic variation is much more important than temporal change. Ultimately, understanding how symbiont strains of varying local benefit are distributed in space and time will help us predict how geography and seasonality are related to host fitness in environmentally acquired symbioses.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.