Mapping microbial symbiont impacts using ecological networks

Microbial symbionts can dramatically reshape host biology, triggering cascading effects that alter the strength, direction, or even presence of interactions among macroorganisms. However, integrating microbes into community-level understanding remains a major ecological challenge. Using insect-facultative symbiont systems as a model, we show how ecological network analyses can reveal these hidden layers of complexity for a deeper, mechanistic understanding of community functioning. By combining testable hypotheses with tools such as multilayer networks or stochastic coextinction models and interaction rewiring, we provide a road map for uncovering how symbionts drive ecological and evolutionary dynamics, opening new possibilities for empirical studies that link microbial traits to ecosystem-level impacts.