by Me­chas and Roberto — This is the story of how pur­su­ing a cen­tury-old ob­ser­va­tion led to the re­cent dis­cov­ery the chem­i­cal ecol­ogy in­volved in pro­tect­ing a bee­tle from fun­gal in­fec­tion dur­ing lar­val molt­ing. It shall come as no sur­prise that we would be thrilled by such a story; through­out the life­time of the blog, we've had posts on in­sect-mi­crobe sym­bioses...