How to translate text using browser tools
1 April 2014 Characteristics, Phenotype, and Transmission of Wolbachia in the Sweet Potato Whitefly, Bemisia tabaci (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae), and Its Parasitoid Eretmocerus sp. nr. Emiratus (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae)
Elad Chiel, Suzanne E. Kelly, Alexandre M. Harris, Marco Gebiola, Xianchun Li, Einat Zchori-Fein, Martha S. Hunter
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

Wolbachia is a common intracellular bacterial endosymbiont of insects, causing a variety of effects including reproductive manipulations such as cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). In this study, we characterized Wolbachia in the whitefly Bemisia tabaci and in the whitefly parasitoid Eretmocerus sp. nr. emiratus. We also tested for horizontal transmission of Wolbachia between and within trophic levels, and we determined the phenotype of Wolbachia in E. sp. nr. emiratus. Using multilocus sequence typing and phylogenetic analyses, we found that B. tabaci and E. sp. nr. emiratus each harbor a different and unique strain of Wolbachia. Both strains belong to the phylogenetic supergroup B. No evidence for horizontal transmission of Wolbachia between and within trophic levels was found in our study system. Finally, crossing results were consistent with a CI phenotype; when Wolbachia-infected E. sp. nr. emiratus males mate with uninfected females, wasp progeny survival dropped significantly, and the number of females was halved. This is the first description of CI caused by Wolbachia in the economically important genus Eretmocerus. Our study underscores the expectation that horizontal transmission events occur rarely in the dynamics of secondary symbionts such as Wolbachia, and highlights the importance of understanding the effects of symbionts on the biology of natural enemies.

© 2014 Entomological Society of America
Elad Chiel, Suzanne E. Kelly, Alexandre M. Harris, Marco Gebiola, Xianchun Li, Einat Zchori-Fein, and Martha S. Hunter "Characteristics, Phenotype, and Transmission of Wolbachia in the Sweet Potato Whitefly, Bemisia tabaci (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae), and Its Parasitoid Eretmocerus sp. nr. Emiratus (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae)," Environmental Entomology 43(2), 353-362, (1 April 2014). https://doi.org/10.1603/EN13286
Received: 11 October 2013; Accepted: 1 January 2014; Published: 1 April 2014
JOURNAL ARTICLE
10 PAGES

This article is only available to subscribers.
It is not available for individual sale.
+ SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

KEYWORDS
cytoplasmic incompatibility
Encarsia
multilocus sequence typing
symbiont
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission
Back to Top