Fig. 2: Nutrient deficiencies and the evolution of obligate symbioses.
From: Symbioses shape feeding niches and diversification across insects
a–d, Across all diets, macronutrients (a–c) and essential amino acids (d) were not consistently associated with the proportion of species within families that had obligate symbionts. e,f, Insect families with diets deficient in B5 (e) and B9 (f) vitamins had a significantly higher proportions of species with obligate symbionts than families feeding on diets with high levels of B vitamins (B5 phylogenetic correlation (CI) −0.45 (−0.61 to −0.22), pMCMC = 0.001; B9 phylogenetic correlation (CI) −0.25 (−0.48 to −0.05), pMCMC = 0.03). Nutrient values on x axes are standardized amounts per gram (‘Nutrient data’ in Methods). The size of points represents the number of host species (log-transformed) examined for obligate symbionts per family. Lines represent logistic regressions with 95% confidence intervals (shaded bands) plotted for illustrative purposes. Analyses of individual amino acids confirmed that obligate symbiosis was not consistently associated with any amino acid deficiencies (‘Obligate symbiosis and types of amino acids’ in Methods and Supplementary Table 29).
