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The role of Wolbachia bacteria in reproductive incompatibilities and hybrid zones of Diabrotica beetles and Gryllus crickets.

ABSTRACT: A rickettsial bacterium in the genus Wolbachia is the cause of a unidirectional reproductive incompatibility observed between two major beetle pests of maize, the western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera, and the Mexican corn rootworm, D. v. zeae. These subspecies are allopatric except for two known regions of sympatry in Texas and Mexico. We demonstrate that populations of D. v. virgifera, with the exception of two populations in southern Arizona, are infected with a strain of Wolbachia. Populations of D. v. zeae are not infected. Treatment of D. v. virgifera with tetracycline eliminated the Wolbachia and removed the reproductive incompatibility. Similar patterns of reproductive incompatibility exist among taxa of the cricket genus Gryllus. Gryllus assimilis, G. integer, G. ovisopis, G. pennsylvanicus, and G. rubens are infected with Wolbachia whereas G. firmus is usually not. Populations of G. rubens and G. ovisopis carry the same Wolbachia strain, which is distinct from that of G. integer. G. pennsylvanicus is infected with two Wolbachia strains, that found in G. rubens and one unique to G. pennsylvanicus. Moreover, a proportion of G. pennsylvanicus individuals harbors both strains. Wolbachia may have influenced speciation in some members of the genus Gryllus by affecting the degree of hybridization between species. Given that Wolbachia infections are relatively common in insects, it is likely that other insect hybrid zones may be influenced by infections with Wolbachia.

SUBMITTER: Giordano R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC23493 | biostudies-literature | 1997 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The role of Wolbachia bacteria in reproductive incompatibilities and hybrid zones of Diabrotica beetles and Gryllus crickets.

Giordano R R Jackson J J JJ Robertson H M HM

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 19971001 21

A rickettsial bacterium in the genus Wolbachia is the cause of a unidirectional reproductive incompatibility observed between two major beetle pests of maize, the western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera, and the Mexican corn rootworm, D. v. zeae. These subspecies are allopatric except for two known regions of sympatry in Texas and Mexico. We demonstrate that populations of D. v. virgifera, with the exception of two populations in southern Arizona, are infected with a strain of Wolb ...[more]

PMID: 9326628

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Project description:Horizontal gene transfer and recombination play a major role in microbial evolution and have been detected in diverse groups, including many of medical relevance such as HIV and dengue virus. In the absence of mechanistic barriers, the evolutionary success of a particular recombination event is determined by whether the recombinant genotype suffers a fitness cost through the disruption of favorable epistatic interactions within the genome, and if so, the extent to which this fitness cost might be mitigated by subsequent compensatory evolution. To investigate the importance of epistatic interactions between genes and the evolutionary viability of a homologous recombination event between diverged ancestral genotypes, we constructed two recombinant microvirid bacteriophages by exchanging their alleles of the gene encoding the coat protein. The coding sequences for this gene differ by approximately 8% at the amino acid level and were interchanged between two ancestral phages related to varphiX174 and well adapted to their culture conditions. Because the recombinant phages showed drastically reduced fitnesses, we further explored their evolutionary viability by subjecting replicate lines of each of them to selection. We found that all four lineages achieved fitnesses commensurate with ancestral fitnesses in as few as 60 generations, and on average, the first substitution accounted for more than half of the total fitness recovery. Fitness recovery required three to five substitutions in each lineage, and overall eight of the nine essential phage genes were involved, suggesting extensive epistatic interactions throughout the genome. Interestingly, the proteins with the most extensive and apparent physical interactions with the exchanged protein in the viral capsid did not appear to have much of a role in fitness recovery. This result appears to be a consequence of the conservation of the amino acid residues involved in the interactions. It suggests that strong epistatic interactions are less important than weaker, transient ones in producing genic incompatibilities because they preclude variability in the interacting regions of the proteins.

Dataset Information

The role of Wolbachia bacteria in reproductive incompatibilities and hybrid zones of Diabrotica beetles and Gryllus crickets.

Publications

The role of Wolbachia bacteria in reproductive incompatibilities and hybrid zones of Diabrotica beetles and Gryllus crickets.

Similar Datasets

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