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The aim of this paper is to explore bioinspired vertiport designs—a hub for drones’ vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) and servicing, also referred to as a nesting station, docking station, hangar, or landing station—for drone swarms tasked with specific missions. The vertiport system design is inspired by tree structures, with branches represented by capsules that house drones. Solar panels mounted on actuators at the top of the vertiport adjust their orientation to maximize sun exposure, supplying power to the vertiport’s isolated grid for continuous energy day and night. A weather station located at the top transmits data to a computing system, ensuring environmental safety for drone operations. The vertiport’s key components include capsules that open and close during drone launch and landing. Each capsule is equipped with charging contacts for the drones, AprilTags to facilitate precise landing, and a mechanism to center the drone within the capsule upon closure. Designed to protect the drones from environmental conditions, these capsules feature robust structures capable of withstanding harsh weather, ensuring the drones are safeguarded inside. This design highlights the potential of bioinspired approaches in creating efficient vertiport systems. 

Parasitoid wasps are exceptionally diverse and use specialized adaptations capable of manipulating the physiology and behaviour of host organisms. In more than two centuries since the first records of Drosophila-parasitizing wasps, nearly 200 described and provisional parasitoid species of drosophilids have been identified. These include endoparasitoids and ectoparasitoids, as well as species attacking larval and pupal hosts. Despite a deep history of research attention and remarkable biodiversity, a wasp species that attacks and develops inside the adult stage of a fly host has not been described previously. Here we report the discovery of a wasp species that infects the adult stage of fruit flies in the genus Drosophila, including one of the most deeply studied model organisms in biology, Drosophila melanogaster. Notably, this wasp can be easily collected from backyard fly baits and has a broad geographic distribution throughout the eastern USA. We document its life history and unique host interactions, including egg-laying into and larval emergence from adult flies, and provide protocols to raise wasps from wild-caught host flies. Our results emphasize the need for ongoing research investment in insect biodiversity and systematics. As parasitoid research continues to uncover unusual biology and supports fundamental mechanistic insights into immunity, metabolism, ecology, evolution and behaviour, we anticipate that this wasp’s association with the laboratory model organism, D. melanogaster, will provide new research opportunities across the life sciences. 

Vertically transmitted (VT) microbial symbionts play a vital role in the evolution of their insect hosts. A longstanding question in symbiont research is what genes help promote long-term stability of vertically transmitted lifestyles. Symbiont success in insect hosts is due in part to expression of beneficial or manipulative phenotypes that favor symbiont persistence in host populations. In Spiroplasma, these phenotypes have been linked to toxin and virulence domains among a few related strains. However, these domains also appear frequently in phylogenetically distant Spiroplasma, and little is known about their distribution across the Spiroplasma genus. In this study, we present the complete genome sequence of the Spiroplasma symbiont of Drosophila atripex, a non-manipulating member of the Ixodetis clade of Spiroplasma, for which genomic data are still limited. We perform a genus-wide comparative analysis of toxin domains implicated in defensive and reproductive phenotypes. From 12 VT and 31 non-VT Spiroplasma genomes, ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs), OTU-like cysteine proteases (OTUs), ankyrins, and ETX/MTX2 domains show high propensity for VT Spiroplasma compared to non-VT Spiroplasma. Specifically, OTU and ankyrin domains can be found only in VT Spiroplasma, and RIP domains are found in all VT Spiroplasma and three non-VT Spiroplasma. These domains are frequently associated with Spiroplasma plasmids, suggesting a possible mechanism for dispersal and maintenance among heritable strains. Searching insect genome assemblies available on public databases uncovered uncharacterized Spiroplasma genomes from which we identified several spaid-like genes encoding RIP, OTU, and ankyrin domains, suggesting functional interactions among those domain types. Our results suggest a conserved core of symbiont domains play an important role in the evolution and persistence of VT Spiroplasma in insects.