Abstract
Reproductive parasites such as Wolbachia are extremely widespread amongst the arthropods and can have a large influence over the reproduction and fitness of their hosts. Undetected infections could thus confound the results of a wide range of studies that focus on aspects of host behavior, reproduction, fitness, and degrees of reproductive isolation. This potential problem has already been underlined by work investigating the incidence of Wolbachia infections in stocks of the model system Drosophila melanogaster. Here we survey a range of lab stocks of further commonly used model arthropods, focusing especially on the flour beetles Tribolium castaneum and Tribolium confusum, the cowpea weevil Callosobruchus maculatus and related species (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae and Bruchidae). These species are widespread stored product pests so knowledge of infections with symbionts further has potential use in informing biocontrol measures. Beetles were assessed for infection with 3 known microbial reproductive parasites: Wolbachia, Rickettsia, Spiroplasma. Infections with some of these microbes were found in some of the lab stocks studied, although overall infections were relatively rare. The consequences of finding infections in these or other species and the type of previous studies likely to be affected most are discussed.
Highlights
Manipulative reproductive parasites are known to be extremely common in arthropods
Considering that insects constitute roughly 75% of global biodiversity (Grimaldi & Engel, 2005), this translates to a single parasite infecting roughly half of the extant species worldwide, a figure that emphasises the significance of Wolbachia in terms of being an extraordinarily successful parasite
In contrast with T. confusum, individuals from the large number of T. castaneum strains tested were all apparently devoid of Wolbachia infections. Whereas in the former six out of eight stocks tested positive for Wolbachia, in contrast none of the ca. 40 T. castaneum strains tested appeared to be infected, three of these were found to carry
Summary
Manipulative reproductive parasites are known to be extremely common in arthropods. It has recently been estimated that one of these parasites, Wolbachia, infects an astonishing66% of insect species (Hilgenboecker et al, 2008). Since the discovery of Wolbachia (Hertig & Wolbach, 1924) and its potential influence on host biology (Yen & Barr, 1971), other microbes have been found that have similar effects, such as Arsenophonus (Gherna et al, 1991), Rickettsia (Werren et al., 1994), Flavobacteria (Hurst et al, 1997, 1999), Cardinium (Zchori-Fein et al, 2004) and Spiroplasma (Hackett et al, 1986) These bacteria have been documented in a wide range of insects (reviewed in Hurst & Jiggins, 2000; Duron et al, 2008a), spiders (Goodacre et al, 2006, Duron et al, 2008b, Goodacre & Martin, 2013) and other arachnids (Martin & Goodacre, 2009). Together with Wolbachia, these reproductive parasites as a group potentially affect an even greater number of species overall
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