Abstract
Bacteria of the Wolbachia genus are maternally inherited symbionts of Nematoda and numerous Arthropoda hosts. There are approximately 20 lineages of Wolbachia, which are called supergroups, and they are designated alphabetically. Wolbachia strains of the supergroups A and B are predominant in arthropods, especially in insects, and supergroup F seems to rank third. Host taxa have been studied very unevenly for Wolbachia symbionts, and here, we turn to one of largely unexplored insect families: Acrididae. On the basis of five genes subject to multilocus sequence typing, we investigated the incidence and genetic diversity of Wolbachia in 41 species belonging three subfamilies (Gomphocerinae, Oedipodinae, and Podisminae) collected in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Russia, and Japan, making 501 specimens in total. Our results revealed a high incidence and very narrow genetic diversity of Wolbachia. Although only the strains belonging to supergroups A and B are commonly present in present, the Acrididae hosts here proved to be infected with supergroups B and F without A-supergroup variants. The only trace of an A-supergroup lineage was noted in one case of an inter-supergroup recombinant haplotype, where the ftsZ gene came from supergroup A, and the others from supergroup B. Variation in the Wolbachia haplotypes in Acrididae hosts within supergroups B and F was extremely low. A comprehensive genetic analysis of Wolbachia diversity confirmed specific features of the Wolbachia allelic set in Acrididae hosts. This result can help to elucidate the crucial issue of Wolbachia biology: the route(s) and mechanism(s) of Wolbachia horizontal transmission.
Highlights
Bacteria of the Wolbachia genus are maternally inherited symbionts of Nematoda and numerous Arthropoda hosts
We aimed to investigate Wolbachia incidence in Acrididae hosts and to determine whether there is a Wolbachia genetic pattern that is specific to Acrididae
Our results indicate that Wolbachia infection (i) is widespread among three subfamilies of Acrididae grasshoppers, (ii) can reach high prevalence in populations, and (iii) can be detected by means of DNA isolated from somatic tissues
Summary
Bacteria of the Wolbachia genus are maternally inherited symbionts of Nematoda and numerous Arthropoda hosts. There is evidence of mutualistic effects between. Wolbachia symbionts and their hosts [3]. Strains belonging to supergroups A and B are predominant in arthropods, especially in insects, and the F supergroup seems to take third place and is partitularly detectable in Nematoda [7], Coleoptera [8,9,10], Diptera [11], Hemiptera [12], Hymenoptera [1,13,14], Isopoda [15], Odonata [16], Scorpiones [17], Strepsiptera [18], and Termites [1,19,20,21].
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