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Distribution and prevalence of Wolbachia in Japanese populations of Lepidoptera
Author(s) -
Tagami Y.,
Miura K.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
insect molecular biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.955
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1365-2583
pISSN - 0962-1075
DOI - 10.1111/j.0962-1075.2004.00492.x
Subject(s) - wolbachia , lepidoptera genitalia , biology , pieris rapae , insect , zoology , botany , ecology , host (biology)
Wolbachia are cytoplasmically inherited bacteria that are reported to infect at least 18–30% of all insect species. Our survey of Lepidoptera indicated that 44.9% of forty‐nine species and 77.8% of nine families tested positive for Wolbachia using PCR with wsp primers. Nineteen species had not been described previously as infected. In particular, although Pieris rapae , which is a common species in Japan, is infected by Wolbachia , the prevalence was very low (3.4%) and there were some localities where Wolbachia could not be detected. The probability of detection of Wolbachia depends on the number of screened individuals of P. rapae . The results indicate that the actual number of species that are positive for Wolbachia may be higher than previously reported.