%0 Journal Article
%T The Insect Holobiont across Nutrition, Immunity, Detoxification, and Pathogen Transmission: An Integrative Review of Functional Microbiome Research
%A Claire Martin
%A Julien Robert
%A Sophie Bernard
%A Antoine Girard
%A Ahmed Mansour
%J Entomology and Applied Science Letters
%@ 2349-2864
%D 2025
%V 12
%N 1
%R 10.51847/iHOiI9VvDv
%P 68-77
%X Insects live in continuous contact with microorganisms that may be transient passengers, environmentally reacquired associates, persistent symbionts, or experimentally engineered partners. Distinguishing among these states is essential because microbial detection does not itself demonstrate biological function, and similar taxonomic patterns may conceal different metabolic activities or host consequences. This integrative review examines how insect-associated microbiota contribute to nutrition and development, immune regulation, xenobiotic metabolism, insecticide responses, and pathogen acquisition and transmission. Evidence is compared across descriptive surveys, defined-community experiments, host- and microbial-genetic manipulations, chemical-tracing studies, and population-level interventions. The strongest evidence arises when microbial membership is localized, persistence is demonstrated, perturbation is followed by controlled restoration, and microbial activity is linked to a measurable host or pathogen phenotype. Nutritional and developmental effects are often conditional on diet, microbial strain, host genotype, and life stage. Immune interactions are bidirectional: host pathways regulate microbial communities, whereas native or introduced microbes can stimulate, stabilize, or disrupt immune homeostasis. Microbial transformation of xenobiotics can reduce or enhance toxicity, but metabolic conversion should not be equated with durable insecticide resistance without evidence of persistence and causal contribution under relevant exposure conditions. Similarly, inhibition of pathogen growth in an assay is not equivalent to reduced transmission. A functional insect holobiont is therefore best treated as a bounded, testable biological system rather than a universal property of insects. Future progress depends on strain-resolved experimentation, longitudinal colonization evidence, chemically explicit functional measurements, ecologically realistic validation, and proportionate biosafety assessment for engineered microbial systems.
%U https://easletters.com/article/the-insect-holobiont-across-nutrition-immunity-detoxification-and-pathogen-transmission-an-integ-iwkmkjtz56qaz6q