Research

How do insects and microbes co-engineer access to decaying material - and how do those relationships evolve, function, and persist under constraint?

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Our lab investigates the symbiotic mechanisms that enable insects to process complex, often recalcitrant substrates like wood and carrion. We focus on insect–microbe systems not just as digestive alliances, but as integrated biological solutions to the problem of decomposition—shaped by evolutionary history, host biology, and the physical structure of decaying material.

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This work began during my PhD and postdoc, where I focused on termites and cockroaches. We were among the first to describe ecological and evolutionary patterns in their gut microbiomes, and to identify mechanisms driving those patterns, including the spatial architecture of termite hindguts. We developed a method that enables access to the fiber-associated microbiome in wood-feeding termites—an approach we’ve since extended to passalid beetles and panesthiine cockroaches. We also developed a germ-free cockroach model to experimentally test microbiome assembly, demonstrating that while inoculum plays a role, host biology is a dominant force in shaping microbial communities.

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Building on this foundation, our current research explores a wider diversity of detritivores. In blowflies, we examine how microbial partners contribute to the degradation of carrion, and whether the host plays an active role in shaping the structure of these communities. We’ve developed germ-free blowfly systems and high-resolution platforms for tracking decomposition over time and space.

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In parallel, we’re using cockroaches as model systems for enteric methane emission in collaboration with Elysia Creative Biology. And through other partnerships with pesticide companies in the Research Triangle, we’re extending our work on termites into applied contexts—developing tools to track digestion, microbiome function, and resource use with precision.

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A key aspect of this work involves inducing dysbiosis in termite systems as a way to probe the architecture of their microbial relationships. These symbioses extend far beyond digestion, supporting social structure, environmental buffering, and possibly even colony stability. By disrupting them, we aim to understand both their underlying logic and their potential points of failure.

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We view decomposition if animal and plant material as particularly deep biological impasses — where insects shouldn't be able to access these materials, but do, through systems evolved under constraint. Whether in termites, cockroaches, or blowflies, we study how these solutions are built, constrained, and repurposed across ecological and evolutionary scales.