With more than 50,000 described species, the leaf beetle family is distributed worldwide and represents about a quarter of the species diversity of all herbivores.

Key findings highlight the role of horizontal gene transfer, the incorporation of foreign bacterial genetic material into the beetle genome, which is thought to be the result of earlier symbioses.

Horizontal gene transfer, largely facilitated by transformation, played a critical role in spreading ARGs across species, while other mechanisms like transduction and conjugation were found to be ...