Scientists from Lund University have explained the key reason for the diversity of insect diets. It turned out that it's all about the bacteria, which provide them with the nutrients they need to survive, and allow them to survive in conditions of scarcity of the main food. The results of the study are published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

It is known that insects are one of the most successfully adapted species on the planet. They also have an extremely varied diet. For example, mosquitoes feed on blood, and termites feed on wood. However, it was still unclear how they could use such a variety of food sources.

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Experts have found that the diet of all insects combine bacteria. Using a model of weevils, it was possible to trace that bacteria provide vitamin B - a vital substance that they cannot produce themselves. Moreover, these animals have become so dependent on bacteria that they have developed new organelles for their placement on their own bodies. As a result, nutrients from bacteria allow insects to survive on a highly unbalanced diet and use new types of food resources.

In addition, a hypothesis has been put forward about the influence of bacteria on the biodiversity of insects, but it cannot be unambiguous. In some families of insects, characterized by specific diets, such as blood, species diversity has stopped. However, often in plant-eating insects, the diet has been associated with a significant increase in species.