Surprising Symbiosis: Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter Eats With Friends

Like a celebrity living on mineral water, the glassy-winged sharpshooter consumes only the dilute sap of woody plants—including grapevines in California, which is feverishly working to prevent the insect’s flight into prized vineyards. Now, in a surprising study published in the June 6 issue of Public Library of Science Biology, researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), the University of Arizona, and their colleagues have discovered that the sharpshooter’s deprivation diet is sneakily supplemented by not one, but two co-dependent bacteria living inside its cells.