I am writing a book about partnerships between animals and microbes. In the process, I have consumed a frankly obscene amount of coffee, to the extent that the dedication might just read “To coffee, with thanks”. So, it is with mixed emotions that I now write this post, about an animal that is ruining coffee with the help of bacteria.

The coffee berry borer is a small, black beetle, just a few millimetres long. The females bore holes into coffee berries and then lay their eggs in the seeds within—the bits that we know as “coffee beans”. The larvae devour the seeds when they hatch, destroying them. In Brazil alone, its antics lead to some 300 million dollars worth of losses,