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Background  Phylogenetically closely related strains of maternally inherited endosymbiotic bacteria are often found in phylogenetically divergent, and geographically distant insect host species. The interspecies transfer of the symbiont  Wolbachia  has been thought to have occurred repeatedly, facilitating its observed global pandemic. Few ecological interactions have been proposed as potential routes for the horizontal transfer of  Wolbachia  within natural insect communities. These routes are however likely to act only at the local scale, but how they may support the global distribution of some  Wolbachia  strains remains unclear.    Results  Here, we characterize the  Wolbachia  diversity in butterflies from the tropical forest regions of central Africa to discuss transfer at both local and global scales. We show that numerous species from both the  Mylothris  (family Pieridae) and  Bicyclus  (family Nymphalidae) butterfly genera are infected with similar  Wolbachia  strains, despite only minor interclade contacts across the life cycles of the species within their partially overlapping ecological niches. The phylogenetic distance and differences in resource use between these genera rule out the role of ancestry, hybridization, and shared host-plants in the interspecies transfer of the symbiont. Furthermore, we could not identify any shared ecological factors to explain the presence of the strains in other arthropod species from other habitats, or even ecoregions.    Conclusion  Only the systematic surveys of the  Wolbachia  strains from entire species communities may offer the material currently lacking for understanding how  Wolbachia  may transfer between highly different and unrelated hosts, as well as across environmental scales.    Supplementary information   Supplementary information  accompanies this paper at 10.1186/s12866-020-02011-2.

Towards unravelling Wolbachia global exchange: a contribution from the Bicyclus and Mylothris butterflies in the Afrotropics