Our latest article, published in Current Opinion in Insect Science, discusses how volatile organic compounds drive a hidden world of communication between insects and microbes, shaping behaviors in mass-reared species like the black soldier fly. We explore how decoding and making use of these molecular messages could revolutionize insect farming by enhancing production efficiency, process sustainability, and insect welfare. Integrating behavioral ecology, state-of-the-art molecular tools, and bioinformatics, we draw a roadmap for studying interkingdom communication.

Schematic overview of the black soldier fly rearing process as an emerging model system for studying multiway communication in insect mass-rearing.