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Should Symbionts Be Nice or Selfish? Antiviral Effects of Wolbachia Are Costly but Reproductive Parasitism Is Not.


Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Martinez, Julien 
Ok, Suzan 
Smith, Sophie 
Snoeck, Kiana 
Day, Jon P 

Abstract

Symbionts can have mutualistic effects that increase their host's fitness and/or parasitic effects that reduce it. Which of these strategies evolves depends in part on the balance of their costs and benefits to the symbiont. We have examined these questions in Wolbachia, a vertically transmitted endosymbiont of insects that can provide protection against viral infection and/or parasitically manipulate its hosts' reproduction. Across multiple symbiont strains we find that the parasitic phenotype of cytoplasmic incompatibility and antiviral protection are uncorrelated. Strong antiviral protection is associated with substantial reductions in other fitness-related traits, whereas no such trade-off was detected for cytoplasmic incompatibility. The reason for this difference is likely that antiviral protection requires high symbiont densities but cytoplasmic incompatibility does not. These results are important for the use of Wolbachia to block dengue virus transmission by mosquitoes, as natural selection to reduce these costs may lead to reduced symbiont density and the loss of antiviral protection.

Description

Keywords

Animals, Drosophila simulans, Host-Parasite Interactions, Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction, Symbiosis, Wolbachia

Journal Title

PLoS Pathog

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1553-7366
1553-7374

Volume Title

11

Publisher

Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (094664/Z/10/Z)
This study was funded by the Wellcome Trust grant WT094664MA (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/). FMJ is supported by a Royal Society Research Fellowship.