Win by Quantity: a Striking Rickettsia -Bias Symbiont Community Revealed by Seasonal Tracking in the Whitefly Bemisia ta
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INVERTEBRATE MICROBIOLOGY
Win by Quantity: a Striking Rickettsia-Bias Symbiont Community Revealed by Seasonal Tracking in the Whitefly Bemisia tabaci Dongxiao Zhao 1 & Zhichun Zhang 1 & Hongtao Niu 1 & Huifang Guo 1 Received: 3 August 2020 / Accepted: 17 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Maintaining an adaptive seasonality is a basic ecological requisite for cold-blooded organism insects which usually harbor various symbionts. However, how coexisting symbionts coordinate in insects during seasonal progress is still unknown. The whitefly Bemisia tabaci in China harbors the obligate symbiont Portiera that infects each individual, as well as various facultative symbionts. In this study, we investigated whitefly populations in cucumber and cotton fields from May to December 2019, aiming to reveal the fluctuations of symbiont infection frequencies, symbiont coordination in multiple infected individuals, and host plants effects on symbiont infections. The results indicated that the facultative symbionts Hamiltonella (H), Rickettsia (R), and Cardinium (C) exist in field whiteflies, with single (H) and double (HC and HR) infections occurring frequently. Infection frequencies of Hamiltonella (always 100%) and Cardinium (29.50–34.38%) remained steady during seasonal progression. Rickettsia infection frequency in the cucumber whitefly population decreased from 64.47% in summer to 35.29% in winter. Significantly lower Rickettsia infection frequency (15.55%) was identified in cotton whitefly populations and was not subject to seasonal fluctuation. Nevertheless, Rickettsia had a significantly quantitative advantage in the symbiont community of whitefly individuals and populations from both cucumber and cotton field all through the seasons. Moreover, higher Portiera and Hamiltonella densities were found in HC and HR whitefly than in H whitefly, suggesting these symbionts may contribute to producing nutrients for their symbiont partners. These results provide ample cues to further explore the interactions between coexisting symbionts, the coevolutionary relationship between symbionts and host symbiont–induced effects on host plant use. Keywords Symbiont . Coinfection . Season . Bemisia tabaci
Introduction Insects have evolved alongside obligate symbionts with nutritional provisions for their survival as well as facultative symbionts that confer ecological and evolutionary impacts [1–3]. Environmental conditions strongly affect the infective states of endosymbionts in insects [4–7]. Variation in heritable symbiont frequencies has been documented across broad spatial scales [8, 9] and over the span of several years in natural populations [10–12]. Transient associations with symbionts can facilitate rapid transitions between phenotypes, which might be more adapted to new environmental conditions [13, 14].
* Huifang Guo [email protected] 1
Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 50, Zhongling Street, Nanjing 210014, China
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