Wolbachia co-infection in a hybrid zone: discovery of horizontal gene transfers from two Wolbachia supergroups into an animal genome

doi:10.18516/0009

Abstract

Highlights

Microbial communities of many arthropod species are dominated numerically by heritable bacterial symbionts whose phenotypic effects range from mutualism to parasitism (Douglas, 2011)
Infected and uninfected grasshoppers across the hybrid zone harbor phage WO genes To initially determine the prevalence of phage WO in the C. parallelus hybrid zone, we PCR-screened hybrid, C. parallelus erythropus (Cpe), and C. parallelus parallelus (Cpp) grasshoppers of all infection types for the minor capsid gene, a virion structural gene commonly used to identify WO haplotypes (Bordenstein & Wernegreen, 2004; Chafee et al, 2010; Gavotte et al, 2004; Masui et al, 2000)
Blank controls were negative for the orf7 amplicon. These results indicate that (i) phage WO is or once was ubiquitous in C. parallelus and (ii) at least part of phage WO has laterally transferred to the grasshopper genome

Summary

Introduction

Microbial communities of many arthropod species are dominated numerically by heritable bacterial symbionts whose phenotypic effects range from mutualism to parasitism (Douglas, 2011). Millennia of co-evolution have produced obligate, mutualistic relationships in which microbial symbionts make essential amino acids and/or. Maternally-transmitted bacteria directly impact arthropod host reproduction by manipulating sex determination, fecundity, and the ratio of infected females (the transmitting-sex) within a population (LePage & Bordenstein, 2013). The alphaproteobacterium Wolbachia is the most widespread of these reproductive manipulators, infecting an estimated 40–52% of all terrestrial arthropod species (Weinert et al, 2015; Zug & Hammerstein, 2012). It uses a variety of mechanisms to increase the number of host females in a population including feminization of genetic males, male-killing, parthenogenesis, and cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), which typically results in embryonic death of offspring produced by an uninfected female mated with an infected male (Serbus et al, 2008)

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