Eating eggplants as a cucurbit feeder: diet shifts promote complex gut microbiome responses in the melon fly Zeugodacus cucurbitae (Diptera, Tephritidae)
This project investigated how the host plant diet and locality affects the microbiome of larvae of the melon fly (Z. cucurbitae) derived from semi-wild populations and especially focused on how a shift from a conventional cucurbit host plant to a unconventional Solanaceae host plant affected larval microbiomes. The project used 16S rRNA metagenomics to investigate the microbiome structure and composition of the larval microbiomes (F1) and the microbiomes of the adults of the parental generation (F0).