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Review

Protists in the Insect Rearing Industry: Benign Passengers or Potential Risk?

by
Edouard Bessette
1,2 and
Bryony Williams
1,*
1
Living Systems Institute, Biosciences, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QD, UK
2
Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, 1871 Copenhagen, Denmark
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Insects 2022, 13(5), 482; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13050482
Submission received: 1 April 2022 / Revised: 10 May 2022 / Accepted: 13 May 2022 / Published: 21 May 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Insect–Pathogen Interactions in Mass-Reared Insects)

Simple Summary

As human populations grow and the climate crisis deepens, humans will need to look to alternative sustainable sources of protein. The insect rearing industry is now rapidly growing to generate more sustainable sources of food and feed, and, as it does so, there will be an urgent need to better understand the role that microorganisms play in both maintaining insect health and generating disease. Protists are microbes that are neither viral, bacterial nor fungal and, therefore, are sometimes overlooked when considering microbial fauna. In this paper, we review the literature on protists that have been uncovered within insects that are being considered for rearing as food and feed. We discuss what is known about how they interact with hosts, how they may affect industrially reared insects in the future and which tools now need to be developed to better study them.

Abstract

As the insects for food and feed industry grows, a new understanding of the industrially reared insect microbiome is needed to better comprehend the role that it plays in both maintaining insect health and generating disease. While many microbiome projects focus on bacteria, fungi or viruses, protists (including microsporidia) can also make up an important part of these assemblages. Past experiences with intensive invertebrate rearing indicate that these parasites, whilst often benign, can rapidly sweep through populations, causing extensive damage. Here, we review the diversity of microsporidia and protist species that are found in reared insect hosts and describe the current understanding of their host spectra, life cycles and the nature of their interactions with hosts. Major entomopathogenic parasite groups with the potential to infect insects currently being reared for food and feed include the Amoebozoa, Apicomplexa, Ciliates, Chlorophyta, Euglenozoa, Ichtyosporea and Microsporidia. However, key gaps exist in the understanding of how many of these entomopathogens affect host biology. In addition, for many of them, there are very limited or even no molecular data, preventing the implementation of molecular detection methods. There is now a pressing need to develop and use novel molecular tools, coupled with standard molecular diagnostic methods, to help unlock their biology and predict the effects of these poorly studied protist parasites in intensive insect rearing systems.
Keywords: mass rearing; edible insects; protists; microsporidia; insect diseases mass rearing; edible insects; protists; microsporidia; insect diseases

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MDPI and ACS Style

Bessette, E.; Williams, B. Protists in the Insect Rearing Industry: Benign Passengers or Potential Risk? Insects 2022, 13, 482. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13050482

AMA Style

Bessette E, Williams B. Protists in the Insect Rearing Industry: Benign Passengers or Potential Risk? Insects. 2022; 13(5):482. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13050482

Chicago/Turabian Style

Bessette, Edouard, and Bryony Williams. 2022. "Protists in the Insect Rearing Industry: Benign Passengers or Potential Risk?" Insects 13, no. 5: 482. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13050482

APA Style

Bessette, E., & Williams, B. (2022). Protists in the Insect Rearing Industry: Benign Passengers or Potential Risk? Insects, 13(5), 482. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13050482

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