The desert woodrat can eat the toxic creosote bush thanks to toxin-degrading bacteria they carry. Buchnera supplements aphids with aminoacids they couldn’t get from sap. The colorado potato beetle uses bacteria in its saliva to suppress the defenses in the plants it eats, much like the ant lion does thanks to bacteria in its saliva to paralyze its victims. The spiky pufferfish uses bacteria to make tetrodotoxin, a lethal substance to poison predators. Leafcutter ants carry antibiotic-producing microbes on their body and use them to disinfect the fungi they cultivate underground. We cannot fully understand the lives of animals without understanding our microbes and our symbioses with them.” From this thesis, Ed Yong, award-winning science writer published in Wired, the New York Times, the Guardian, Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American and more, broadens our understanding of the many roles bacteria play in the lives of many animals. This is the best book I’ve read about symbiosis in the animal kingdom, and presumably the best book there is on this topic.
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