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Ongoing Coevolution of Wolbachia and a Widespread Invasive Ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes

While Wolbachia are commonly found among arthropods, intraspecific infection rates can vary substantially across the geographic populations. Here we report nearly 100% prevalence of Wolbachia in the global populations of the yellow crazy ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes. To understand coevolutionary hist...

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Autores principales: Lee, Chih-Chi, Lin, Chun-Yi, Tseng, Shu-Ping, Matsuura, Kenji, Yang, Chin-Cheng Scotty
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7601630/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33053771
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8101569
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author Lee, Chih-Chi
Lin, Chun-Yi
Tseng, Shu-Ping
Matsuura, Kenji
Yang, Chin-Cheng Scotty
author_facet Lee, Chih-Chi
Lin, Chun-Yi
Tseng, Shu-Ping
Matsuura, Kenji
Yang, Chin-Cheng Scotty
author_sort Lee, Chih-Chi
collection PubMed
description While Wolbachia are commonly found among arthropods, intraspecific infection rates can vary substantially across the geographic populations. Here we report nearly 100% prevalence of Wolbachia in the global populations of the yellow crazy ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes. To understand coevolutionary history between Wolbachia and A. gracilipes, we identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in Wolbachia from the ant across 12 geographical regions and compared the phylogeny of SNP-based Wolbachia to patterns of the ant’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation. Our results revealed a strong concordance between phylogenies of Wolbachia and host mtDNA, providing immediate evidence of co-divergence. Among eight identified SNP loci separating the genetic clusters of Wolbachia, seven loci are located in potential protein-coding genes, three of which being non-synonymous SNPs that may influence gene functions. We found a Wolbachia hypothetical protein gene with signature of positive selection. These findings jointly allow us to characterize Wolbachia-ant coevolution and also raise a question about mechanism(s) underlying maintenance of high prevalence of Wolbachia during the colonization of this invasive ant.
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spelling pubmed-76016302020-11-01 Ongoing Coevolution of Wolbachia and a Widespread Invasive Ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes Lee, Chih-Chi Lin, Chun-Yi Tseng, Shu-Ping Matsuura, Kenji Yang, Chin-Cheng Scotty Microorganisms Article While Wolbachia are commonly found among arthropods, intraspecific infection rates can vary substantially across the geographic populations. Here we report nearly 100% prevalence of Wolbachia in the global populations of the yellow crazy ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes. To understand coevolutionary history between Wolbachia and A. gracilipes, we identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in Wolbachia from the ant across 12 geographical regions and compared the phylogeny of SNP-based Wolbachia to patterns of the ant’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation. Our results revealed a strong concordance between phylogenies of Wolbachia and host mtDNA, providing immediate evidence of co-divergence. Among eight identified SNP loci separating the genetic clusters of Wolbachia, seven loci are located in potential protein-coding genes, three of which being non-synonymous SNPs that may influence gene functions. We found a Wolbachia hypothetical protein gene with signature of positive selection. These findings jointly allow us to characterize Wolbachia-ant coevolution and also raise a question about mechanism(s) underlying maintenance of high prevalence of Wolbachia during the colonization of this invasive ant. MDPI 2020-10-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7601630/ /pubmed/33053771 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8101569 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Lee, Chih-Chi
Lin, Chun-Yi
Tseng, Shu-Ping
Matsuura, Kenji
Yang, Chin-Cheng Scotty
Ongoing Coevolution of Wolbachia and a Widespread Invasive Ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes
title Ongoing Coevolution of Wolbachia and a Widespread Invasive Ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes
title_full Ongoing Coevolution of Wolbachia and a Widespread Invasive Ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes
title_fullStr Ongoing Coevolution of Wolbachia and a Widespread Invasive Ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes
title_full_unstemmed Ongoing Coevolution of Wolbachia and a Widespread Invasive Ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes
title_short Ongoing Coevolution of Wolbachia and a Widespread Invasive Ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes
title_sort ongoing coevolution of wolbachia and a widespread invasive ant, anoplolepis gracilipes
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7601630/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33053771
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8101569
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