Assessing insect responses to climate change: What are we testing for? Where should we be heading?

To understand how researchers are tackling globally important issues, it is crucial to identify whether current research is comprehensive enough to make substantive predictions about general responses. We examined how research on climate change affecting insects is being assessed, what factors are being tested and the localities of studies, from 1703 papers published between 1985 and August 2012. Most published research (64%) is generated from Europe and North America and being dedicated to core data analysis, with 29% of the studies analysed dedicated to Lepidoptera and 22% Diptera: which are well above their contribution to the currently identified insect species richness (estimated at 13% and 17% respectively). Research publications on Coleoptera fall well short of their proportional contribution (19% of publications but 39% of insect species identified), and to a lesser extent so do Hemiptera, and Hymenoptera. Species specific responses to changes in temperature by assessing distribution/range shifts or changes in abundance were the most commonly used methods of assessing the impact of climate change on insects. Research on insects and climate change to date is dominated by manuscripts assessing butterflies in Europe, insects of economic and/or environmental concern in forestry, agriculture, and model organisms. The research on understanding how insects will respond to a rapidly changing climate is still in its infancy, but the current trends of publications give a good basis for how we are attempting to assess insect responses. In particular, there is a crucial need for broader studies of ecological, behavioural, physiological and life history responses to be addressed across a greater range of geographic locations, particularly Asia, Africa and Australasia, and in areas of high human population growth and habitat modification. It is still too early in our understanding of taxa responses to climate change to know if charismatic taxa, such as butterflies, or disease vectors, including Diptera, can be used as keystone taxa to generalise other insect responses to climate change. This is critical as the basic biology of most species is still poorly known, and dominant, well studied taxa may show variable responses to climate change across their distribution due to regional biotic and abiotic influences. Indeed identifying if insect responses to climate change can be generalised using phylogeny, functional traits, or functional groups, or will populations and species exhibit idiosyncratic responses, should be a key priority for future research.

Microbe-dependent and nonspecific effects of procedures to eliminate the resident microbiota from Drosophila melanogaster.

Comparisons of animals bearing and lacking microorganisms can offer valuable insight into the interactions between animal hosts and their resident microbiota. Most hosts are naturally infected, and therefore, these comparisons require specific procedures (e.g., antibiotic treatment or physical exclusion of microorganisms) to disrupt the microbiota, but the potential for confounding nonspecific effects of the procedure on the traits of the host exists. Microbe-dependent and nonspecific effects can be discriminated by using multiple procedures: microbe-dependent effects are evident in hosts made microbe free by different procedures, but nonspecific effects are unique to individual procedures. As a demonstration, two procedures, oral administration of chlortetracycline (50 µg ml(-1) diet) and microbiota removal by egg dechorionation, were applied to Drosophila melanogaster in a 2-by-2 factorial design. Microorganisms were undetectable in flies from dechorionated eggs and reduced by >99% in chlortetracycline-treated flies. Drosophila flies subjected to both protocols displayed an extended preadult development time, suggesting that the microbiota promotes the development rate. Female chlortetracycline-treated flies, whether from untreated or dechorionated eggs, displayed reduced protein content and egg fecundity, which could be attributed to the nonspecific effect of the antibiotic. We recommend that procedures used to disrupt the microbiota of animals should be selected, following systematic analysis of alternative mechanistically distinct procedures, on the basis of two criteria: those that achieve the greatest reduction (ideally, elimination) of the microbiota and those that achieve minimal nonspecific effects.

Impact of the resident microbiota on the nutritional phenotype of Drosophila melanogaster.

BACKGROUND: Animals are chronically infected by benign and beneficial microorganisms that generally promote animal health through their effects on the nutrition, immune function and other physiological systems of the host. Insight into the host-microbial interactions can be obtained by comparing the traits of animals experimentally deprived of their microbiota and untreated animals. Drosophila melanogaster is an experimentally tractable system to study host-microbial interactions. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The nutritional significance of the microbiota was investigated in D. melanogaster bearing unmanipulated microbiota, demonstrated by 454 sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicons to be dominated by the α-proteobacterium Acetobacter, and experimentally deprived of the microbiota by egg dechorionation (conventional and axenic flies, respectively). In axenic flies, larval development rate was depressed with no effect on adult size relative to conventional flies, indicating that the microbiota promotes larval growth rates. Female fecundity did not differ significantly between conventional and axenic flies, but axenic flies had significantly reduced metabolic rate and altered carbohydrate allocation, including elevated glucose levels. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We have shown that elimination of the resident microbiota extends larval development and perturbs energy homeostasis and carbohydrate allocation patterns of of D. melanogaster. Our results indicate that the resident microbiota promotes host nutrition and interacts with the regulation of host metabolism.