Some morphologies, like the structures beetles possess, enhance a species fitness so much, those traits are preserved for millennia. A process called adaptive radiation ensues, which results in a large diversity of closely related species with similar traits. Already, I have talked about beetles more than once (1, 2, 3). With so many of them, they were just bound to interact with the forest floor. Today, I learned that a species of bark beetle that has evolved a close ‘symbiotic’ relationship with a fungus, may have a more convoluted relationship with the fungus than we previously thought.

Bo Wang and his team of scientists back in 2012 set off to examine this relationship a bit closer. They initially wanted to analyze this species interaction because some observations in the field showed more of an antagonistic relationship between the fungus and the beetle larvae. Additionally, bark beetles are among the most destructive forest inhabitants, as they can greatly reduce an area’s economic value and ecological functioning. For these reasons, funding for this type of research is easily acquired.