Nutrient acquisition by insect herbivores affect all aspect of the the lifespan of individauls. For seed-sucking insect herbivores, they face challenges with nutrient acquisition due to requirement for extra-oral digestion of seed contents into a readily-ingestible state. In this study, we demonstrated environmentally-transmitted Caballeronia insecticola allow seed-sucking R. pedestris to overcome challenges with extra-oral digestion. Through the evaluation, first, we found symbiotic insects exhibited enhanced feeding efficiency by consuming significantly larger amount of food per feeding attempt compared to apo-symbiotic insects (P<0.05). Then, we observed feeding behavior modification in the symbiotic insects from the behavior tracking evaluation. Symbiotic insects displayed dichotomic behavior which can be generally divided into early focused feeding and later subdued resting periods. By contrast, apo-symbiotic insects displayed unordered behavior by frequent switches between feeding and walking behavior.

• Minhyung Jung(Department of Life Sciences, Gachon University, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea) Corresponding author
• Jung-Wook Kho(Department of Life Sciences, Gachon University, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea)
• Joo-Young Kim(Department of Life Sciences, Gachon University, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea)
• Soowan Kim(Department of Life Sciences, Gachon University, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea)
• Doo-Hyung Lee(Department of Life Sciences, Gachon University, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea)