Abstract
The female-biased infection of facultative symbionts has been found in Bemisia tabaci; however, whether there are any differences in tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) and obligate symbiont infection rates between females and males is unknown. Determining whether such differences exist would be very important for understanding the spread of the plant virus and of the symbionts. We compared both symbiont infection types, including obligate and facultative symbionts, and the rates of TYLCV infection in both sexes in five field populations from Jiangsu Province, China. The obligate symbiont Portiera aleyrodidarum was not found in every whitefly tested. In all tested populations, more females than males were found to harbor P. aleyrodidarum; and more females than males also harbored Hamiltonella defense, the most common facultative symbiont as well as Cardinium. In addition to female-biased symbiont infections, there were also female-biased TYLCV infections, and the infection frequencies of this plant virus in females were higher than those in males. Taken together, these results suggested that both the female-biased symbiont infections and female-biased TYLCV infections promoted the rapid spread of TYLCV in China.
Highlights
Insects commonly harbor a variety of endosymbionts, including obligate symbionts that are essential for the host’s survival and development and facultative symbionts that are not essential but may play important roles in the host’s ecology and evolution
Portiera aleyrodidarum is an obligate symbiont in B. tabaci, and Arsenophonus, Hamiltonella, Wolbachia, Cardinium, Fritschea and Rickettsia are facultative symbionts that have been found in B. tabaci [6,7,8,9,10]
Five field populations of B. tabaci were collected in Jiangsu province, China to compare the symbiont infection rates between females and males
Summary
Insects commonly harbor a variety of endosymbionts, including obligate symbionts that are essential for the host’s survival and development and facultative symbionts that are not essential but may play important roles in the host’s ecology and evolution. There are diverse beneficial effects conferred by the symbionts of aphids, including protection from natural enemies, heat tolerance, insecticidal susceptibility, and improvements in reproduction [1,2,3]. Similar to other sap-sucking insects, such as aphids, B. tabaci harbors obligate and facultative symbionts. Portiera aleyrodidarum is an obligate symbiont in B. tabaci, and Arsenophonus, Hamiltonella, Wolbachia, Cardinium, Fritschea and Rickettsia are facultative symbionts that have been found in B. tabaci [6,7,8,9,10]. Studies on facultative symbiont diversity among different biotypes of B. tabaci have indicated that some facultative symbionts were biotypedependent. In the southwest Indian Ocean, a clear association between facultative symbiotypes and biotypes of
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