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Maternally inherited microbes that spread via male-killing are common pathogens of insects, yet very little is known about the evolutionary duration of these associations. The few examples to date indicate very recent, and thus potentially transient, infections. A male-killing strain of Wolbachia has recently been discovered in natural populations of Drosophila innubila. The population-level effects of this infection are significant: approximately 35% of females are infected, infected females produce very strongly female-biased sex ratios, and the resulting population-level sex ratio is significantly female biased. Using data on infection prevalence and Wolbachia transmission rates, infected cytoplasmic lineages are estimated to experience a approximately 5% selective advantage relative to uninfected lineages. The evolutionary history of this infection was explored by surveying patterns of polymorphism in both the host and parasite genomes, comparing the Wolbachia wsp gene and the host mtDNA COI gene to five host nuclear genes. Molecular data suggest that this male-killing infection is evolutionarily old, a conclusion supported with a simple model of parasite and mtDNA transmission dynamics. Despite a large effective population size of the host species and strong selection to evolve resistance, the D. innubila-Wolbachia association is likely at a stable equilibrium that is maintained by imperfect maternal transmission of the bacteria rather than partial resistance in the host species.

genetics

Evolutionarily Stable Infection by a Male-Killing Endosymbiont in Drosophila innubilaSequence data from this article have been deposited with the EMBL/GenBank Data Libraries under accession nos. AY541089, AY541237 and AY552552, AY552553.