TY - JOUR

T1 - Narrow Genetic Diversity of Wolbachia Symbionts in Acrididae Grasshopper Hosts (Insecta, Orthoptera)

AU - Ilinsky, Yury

AU - Demenkova, Mary

AU - Bykov, Roman

AU - Bugrov, Alexander

N1 - Funding Information: Funding: This work was supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research grant No. 19-04-00983, by Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Russian Federation) grant No. 121031800061-7 (to Y.I., M.D. and R.B.) and by the Federal Fundamental Scientific Research Programme grant No. FWSG-2021-0004 (to A.B.). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

PY - 2022/1/1

Y1 - 2022/1/1

N2 - Bacteria of the Wolbachia genus are maternally inherited symbionts of Nematoda and numerous Arthropoda hosts. There are approximately 20 lineages of Wolbachia, which are called supergroups, and they are designated alphabetically. Wolbachia strains of the supergroups A and B are predominant in arthropods, especially in insects, and supergroup F seems to rank third. Host taxa have been studied very unevenly for Wolbachia symbionts, and here, we turn to one of largely unexplored insect families: Acrididae. On the basis of five genes subject to multilocus sequence typing, we investigated the incidence and genetic diversity of Wolbachia in 41 species belonging three subfamilies (Gomphocerinae, Oedipodinae, and Podisminae) collected in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Russia, and Japan, making 501 specimens in total. Our results revealed a high incidence and very narrow genetic diversity of Wolbachia. Although only the strains belonging to supergroups A and B are commonly present in present, the Acrididae hosts here proved to be infected with supergroups B and F without A-supergroup variants. The only trace of an A-supergroup lineage was noted in one case of an inter-supergroup recombinant haplotype, where the ftsZ gene came from supergroup A, and the others from supergroup B. Variation in the Wolbachia haplotypes in Acrididae hosts within supergroups B and F was extremely low. A comprehensive genetic analysis of Wolbachia diversity confirmed specific features of the Wolbachia allelic set in Acrididae hosts. This result can help to elucidate the crucial issue of Wolbachia biology: the route(s) and mechanism(s) of Wolbachia horizontal transmission.

AB - Bacteria of the Wolbachia genus are maternally inherited symbionts of Nematoda and numerous Arthropoda hosts. There are approximately 20 lineages of Wolbachia, which are called supergroups, and they are designated alphabetically. Wolbachia strains of the supergroups A and B are predominant in arthropods, especially in insects, and supergroup F seems to rank third. Host taxa have been studied very unevenly for Wolbachia symbionts, and here, we turn to one of largely unexplored insect families: Acrididae. On the basis of five genes subject to multilocus sequence typing, we investigated the incidence and genetic diversity of Wolbachia in 41 species belonging three subfamilies (Gomphocerinae, Oedipodinae, and Podisminae) collected in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Russia, and Japan, making 501 specimens in total. Our results revealed a high incidence and very narrow genetic diversity of Wolbachia. Although only the strains belonging to supergroups A and B are commonly present in present, the Acrididae hosts here proved to be infected with supergroups B and F without A-supergroup variants. The only trace of an A-supergroup lineage was noted in one case of an inter-supergroup recombinant haplotype, where the ftsZ gene came from supergroup A, and the others from supergroup B. Variation in the Wolbachia haplotypes in Acrididae hosts within supergroups B and F was extremely low. A comprehensive genetic analysis of Wolbachia diversity confirmed specific features of the Wolbachia allelic set in Acrididae hosts. This result can help to elucidate the crucial issue of Wolbachia biology: the route(s) and mechanism(s) of Wolbachia horizontal transmission.

KW - Acrididae

KW - Horizontal transmission

KW - Multilocus sequence typing

KW - Population

KW - Recombination

KW - Symbiont

KW - Wolbachia

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85122853005&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/ijms23020853

DO - 10.3390/ijms23020853

M3 - Article

C2 - 35055035

AN - SCOPUS:85122853005

VL - 23

JO - International Journal of Molecular Sciences

JF - International Journal of Molecular Sciences

SN - 1661-6596

IS - 2

M1 - 853

ER -