Biological invasions pose an escalating threat to native ecosystems. The accumulation of invasive alien plants worldwide is not saturated yet, underscoring the persistent and growing impact of invasions. Soil microorganisms play a key role in the process of alien plant invasion. However, the temporal dynamics of microbial communities has rarely been determined during the invasion owing to the dearth of long-term, in situ experimental systems. Here, we examined the temporal succession of soil microbial communities 8 years after experiment setup in a common garden. Bacterial communities displayed divergent temporal succession, with invasive plants exhibiting higher turnover rates. Invasive alien plants reduced stochasticity in bacterial communities, likely acting as an environmental filter on community assembly. Plant growth-promoting microbes underwent higher succession rates in invasive alien plants compared to native plants, suggesting that invasive alien plants may possess a distinct advantage in fostering a favorable microbiota for their own growth and establishment. In sharp contrast, native plants selectively increased succession rates of specific plant pathogens. Furthermore, the microbial co-occurrence network was more complex in invasive plants, suggesting that invasive plants foster intricate relationships among microbial communities. Therefore, the asymmetric succession in soil microbial communities enables invasive plants recruit beneficial microbiota from the surrounding soil. These results deepen our understanding of the mechanism underlying plant invasion and provide novel insights into predicting the ecological consequences resulting from widespread plant invasion. This knowledge can be incorporated into management strategies to address the evolving challenges posed by invasive plants.

The Bemisia tabaci Mediterranean (MED) cryptic species has been rapidly invading to most parts of the world owing to its strong ecological adaptability, which is considered as a model insect for stress tolerance studies under rapidly changing environments. Selection of a suitable reference gene for quantitative stress-responsive gene expression analysis based on qRT-PCR is critical for elaborating the molecular mechanisms of thermotolerance. To obtain accurate and reliable normalization data in MED, eight candidate reference genes (β-act, GAPDH, β-tub, EF1-α, GST, 18S, RPL13A and α-tub) were examined under various thermal stresses for varied time periods by using geNorm, NormFinder and BestKeeper algorithms, respectively. Our results revealed that β-tub and EF1-α were the best reference genes across all sample sets. On the other hand, 18S and GADPH showed the least stability for all the samples studied. β-act was proved to be highly stable only in case of short-term thermal stresses. To our knowledge this was the first comprehensive report on validation of reference genes under varying temperature stresses in MED. The study could expedite particular discovery of thermotolerance genes in MED. Further, the present results can form the basis of further research on suitable reference genes in this invasive insect and will facilitate transcript profiling in other invasive insects.

Diglyphusspecies are dominant biocontrol agents for suppressing outbreaks of agromyzid leafminers in fields. In July 2015, we collected a new thelytokous species ofDiglyphusin Qinghai, China. The wasp is here named asD.waniLiu, Zhu & Yefremova sp. nov., based on morphological and molecular analyses. The life history and biocontrol potential of the wasp were studied in the laboratory and by providingLiriomyza sativaelarvae. The intrinsic rate of increase, finite rate of increase, and mean generation time were 0.2373 d⁻¹, 1.2678 d⁻¹, and 15.9 d, respectively. The wasps showed three types of host-killing behaviour, namely parasitism, host feeding and host stinging, resulting in 47.6, 94.4 and 3.4 host larvae killed per wasp over a lifetime, respectively. The finite total host-killing rate was 1.0071 and the wasp showed strong synovigeny. The wasp may be a crucial biocontrol agent against agromyzid leafminers.