Some 10 to 20 per cent of insects depend on such microbes, which provide vitamins, amino acids for making proteins, and sterols for making hormones.8 All of these living supplements allow their owners to subsist on deficient diets, from sap to blood. Carpenter ants – a diverse group with around 1,000 species – carry a symbiont called Blochmannia that allows them to live on a largely vegetarian diet and dominate the canopies of tropical forests.9 Mini-vampires like lice and bed bugs (along with non-insects like ticks and leeches) rely on bacteria for the B-vitamins that are missing in their
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