Abstract. With over a million described species, insects represent the most successful group of animals on Earth. One of the drivers of insect diversity is

Symbiotic bacteria can have exceedingly small genomes. This study finds that ancient bacterial symbionts of planthoppers have repeatedly evolved the smallest known genomes, losing most biosynthetic fu...

Reliable transmission across host generations is a major challenge for bacteria that associate with insects, and independently established symbionts have addressed this challenge in different ways. Th...