Evidence for Common Horizontal Transmission of Wolbachia among Ants and Ant Crickets: Kleptoparasitism Added to the List.

Shu-Ping Tseng,Po-Wei Hsu,Li-Hsin Wu,James K Wetterer,Chin-Cheng Scotty Yang,Sylvain Hugel,Tsuyoshi Yoshimura,Chow-Yang Lee,Chih-Chi Lee

doi:10.3390/microorganisms8060805

Abstract

While Wolbachia, an intracellular bacterial symbiont, is primarily transmitted maternally in arthropods, horizontal transmission between species has been commonly documented. We examined kleptoparasitism as a potential mechanism for Wolbachia horizontal transmission, using ant crickets and their host ants as the model system. We compared prevalence and diversity of Wolbachia across multiple ant cricket species with different degrees of host specificity/integration level. Our analyses revealed at least three cases of inter-ordinal Wolbachia transfer among ant and ant crickets, and also showed that ant cricket species with high host-integration and host-specificity tend to harbor a higher Wolbachia prevalence and diversity than other types of ant crickets. This study provides empirical evidence that distribution of Wolbachia across ant crickets is largely attributable to horizontal transmission, but also elucidates the role of intimate ecological association in successful Wolbachia horizontal transmission.

Highlights

Wolbachia are widespread, maternally-transmitted, intracellular bacteria, present in approximately half of all arthropod species [1,2]
We identified ten and six Wolbachia strains from the studied ant crickets and ants, respectively (Table 1)
Nine of the ten Wolbachia strains from ant crickets were fully typed by multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) and assigned to a sequence type (ST) (Table 1). wMsp1–wMsp8 and wMame1 are represented by seven unique MLSTs belonging to either Wolbachia supergroup A or F (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Maternally-transmitted, intracellular bacteria, present in approximately half of all arthropod species [1,2]. Wolbachia must pass three main filters before successfully colonizing a new host species [8]. Wolbachia must come into physical contact with the potential host (encounter filter), evade the host’s immune system and replicate in the new host (compatibility filter). The community composition may affect filter stringency and shapes the epidemiological patterns of Wolbachia in a community. Communities composed of generalist or specialist species will affect both encounter and compatibility filters [9,10]. The intimate interspecific interactions by specialists are predicted to favor Wolbachia transmission. These interactions may restrict the transmission sources to a few species [9]

Methods

Results

Conclusion