Horizontal Transmission of Microbial Symbionts Within a Guild of Fly Parasitoids
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HOST MICROBE INTERACTIONS
Horizontal Transmission of Microbial Symbionts Within a Guild of Fly Parasitoids Noam Tzuri 1 & Ayelet Caspi-Fluger 1 & Kfir Betelman 1 & Sarit Rohkin Shalom 1 & Elad Chiel 1 Received: 16 August 2020 / Accepted: 7 October 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Many insects harbor facultative microbial symbionts which affect the ecology of their hosts in diverse ways. Most symbionts are transmitted vertically with high fidelity, whereas horizontal transmission occurs rarely. Parasitoid larvae feed on a single host and are in close physical contact with it, providing an ecological opportunity for symbionts’ horizontal transmission, but there is little empirical evidence documenting this. Here we studied horizontal transmission of three bacterial symbionts—Rickettsia, Sodalis, and Wolbachia—between three fly pupal ectoparasitoid species: Spalangia cameroni, S. endius, and Muscidifurax raptor. Muscidifurax raptor readily parasitized and successfully developed on the Spalangia spp., while the inverse did not happen. The two Spalangia spp. attacked each other and conspecifics in very low rates. Symbiont horizontal transmissions followed by stable vertical transmission in the recipient species were achieved, in low percentages, only between conspecifics: Wolbachia from infected to uninfected M. raptor, Rickettsia in S. endius, and Sodalis in S. cameroni. Low frequency of horizontal transmissions occurred in the interspecific combinations, but none of them persisted in the recipient species beyond F4, at most. Our study is one of few to demonstrate symbionts’ horizontal transmission between hosts within the same trophic level and guild and highlights the rarity of such events. Keywords Musca domestica . Wolbachia . Sodalis . Rickettsia . Spalangia . Muscidifurax . Pteromalidae
Introduction Numerous insect species harbor bacterial intracellular symbionts. Some symbionts fill a critical nutritional role in insect hosts that feed on unbalanced diets, such as plant-sap feeders (mostly Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha) in which the symbionts produce essential amino acids, and blood-sucking insects (e.g. lice and tsetse flies) in which the symbionts produce B vitamins. In return, the host provides the symbiont with other nutrients or precursors, and therefore the partners are tied in a mutually obligate association. In rare cases, symbionts are essential for their host’s reproduction. Such essential symbionts, commonly termed “primary symbionts,” are strictly vertically maternally transmitted. Due to the mutual coNoam Tzuri, Ayelet Caspi-Fluger and Kfir Betelman contributed equally to this work. * Elad Chiel [email protected] 1
Department of Biology and Environment, University of Haifa-Oranim, 3600600 Tivon, Israel
dependence, the host and its primary symbiont(s) co-evolve, and this is reflected in a typical phylogenetic congruence between the parties [1–3]. Many other symbionts, often termed “secondary symbionts,” do not produce nutrients but contribute to
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