Wolbachia pipientis Associated With Tephritid Fruit Fly Pests: From Basic Research to Applications.

Mariana Mateos,Silvia B Lanzavecchia,Antonios A Augustinos,Pablo Liedo,Jorge Toledo,Vangelis Doudoumis,Claudia Conte,Nikos T Papadopoulos,Georgios A Kyritsis,George Tsiamis,Karina Guillén,Elias D Asimakis,Brenda M Morán-Aceves,Humberto Martinez Montoya,Diego F Segura

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.01080

Abstract

Members of the true fruit flies (family Tephritidae) are among the most serious agricultural pests worldwide, whose control and management demands large and costly international efforts. The need for cost-effective and environmentally friendly integrated pest management (IPM) has led to the development and implementation of autocidal control strategies. These approaches include the widely used sterile insect technique and the incompatible insect technique (IIT). IIT relies on maternally transmitted bacteria (namely Wolbachia) to cause a conditional sterility in crosses between released mass-reared Wolbachia-infected males and wild females, which are either uninfected or infected with a different Wolbachia strain (i.e., cytoplasmic incompatibility; CI). Herein, we review the current state of knowledge on Wolbachia-tephritid interactions including infection prevalence in wild populations, phenotypic consequences, and their impact on life history traits. Numerous pest tephritid species are reported to harbor Wolbachia infections, with a subset exhibiting high prevalence. The phenotypic effects of Wolbachia have been assessed in very few tephritid species, due in part to the difficulty of manipulating Wolbachia infection (removal or transinfection). Based on recent methodological advances (high-throughput DNA sequencing) and breakthroughs concerning the mechanistic basis of CI, we suggest research avenues that could accelerate generation of necessary knowledge for the potential use of Wolbachia-based IIT in area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) strategies for the population control of tephritid pests.

Highlights

The Economic Importance and Management of Tephritid Pest SpeciesFlies in the family Tephritidae (Diptera) include some of the world’s most important agricultural pests
Successful sterile insect technique (SIT) programs as part of Area-wide Integrated Pest Management (AW-integrated pest management (IPM)) strategies have been implemented for several tephritids: Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann); Anastrepha ludens (Loew); Anastrepha obliqua (Macquart); Zeugodacus cucurbitae (Coquillett); Bactrocera dorsalis Hendel; and Bactrocera tryoni (Froggatt) (Enkerlin, 2005; Hendrichs et al, 2005; Klassen and Curtis, 2005; Cáceres et al, 2007)
incompatible insect technique (IIT) relies on the principle of reducing female fertility, but utilizes endosymbiotic bacteria instead of radiation, to induce a context-dependent sterility in wild females. It is based on the ability of certain maternally inherited bacteria to induce a form of reproductive incompatibility known as cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI; explained in the section below)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Flies in the family Tephritidae (Diptera) include some of the world’s most important agricultural pests. The advantages of the SIT over other pest control approaches (e.g., use of pesticides) are that it is species-specific and environmentally friendly (Lees et al, 2015; Bourtzis et al, 2016), and resistance is less likely to evolve (but see Hibino and Iwahashi, 1991; McInnis et al, 1996) Another autocidal strategy where mating between massreared and wild insects can be used to suppress pest populations is the incompatible insect technique (IIT); coined by Boller et al (1976). IIT relies on the principle of reducing female fertility, but utilizes endosymbiotic bacteria instead of radiation, to induce a context-dependent sterility in wild females It is based on the ability of certain maternally inherited bacteria (mainly from the genus Wolbachia) to induce a form of reproductive incompatibility known as cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI; explained in the section below). Wolbachia has been reported to influence positively or negatively numerous aspects of their host’s behavior including sleep, learning and memory capacity, mating, feeding, thermal preference, locomotion, and agression (reviewed by Bi and Wang, 2019; Wedell, 2019)

Methods to Assess Wolbachia Infection Status

Methods to Taxonomically Characterize Wolbachia Strains

Methods to Functionally Characterize Wolbachia Strains

Findings

CONCLUSION