From Parasite to Mutualist: Rapid Evolution of Wolbachia in Natural Populations of Drosophila
| dc.creator | Weeks, Andrew R | en |
| dc.creator | Turelli, Michael | en |
| dc.creator | Harcombe, William R | en |
| dc.creator | Reynolds, K. Tracy | en |
| dc.creator | Hoffmann, Ary A | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2013-05-28T17:11:29Z | en |
| dc.date.available | 2013-05-28T17:11:29Z | en |
| dc.date.issued | 2007-04-17 | en |
| dc.description | Andrew R Weeks is with University of Melbourne, Michael Turelli is with University of California Davis, William R Harcombe is with UT Austin, K. Tracy Reynolds is with University of Melbourne, Ary A Hoffmann is with University of Melbourne. | en |
| dc.description.abstract | Wolbachia are maternally inherited bacteria that commonly spread through host populations by causing cytoplasmic incompatibility, often expressed as reduced egg hatch when uninfected females mate with infected males. Infected females are frequently less fecund as a consequence of Wolbachia infection. However, theory predicts that because of maternal transmission, these “parasites” will tend to evolve towards a more mutualistic association with their hosts. Drosophila simulans in California provided the classic case of a Wolbachia infection spreading in nature. Cytoplasmic incompatibility allowed the infection to spread through individual populations within a few years and from southern to northern California (more than 700 km) within a decade, despite reducing the fecundity of infected females by 15%–20% under laboratory conditions. Here we show that the Wolbachia in California D. simulans have changed over the last 20 y so that infected females now exhibit an average 10% fecundity advantage over uninfected females in the laboratory. Our data suggest smaller but qualitatively similar changes in relative fecundity in nature and demonstrate that fecundity-increasing Wolbachia variants are currently polymorphic in natural populations. | en |
| dc.description.department | Biological Sciences, School of | en |
| dc.description.sponsorship | We thank the Australian Research Council (ARC) for financial support via their Special Research Centre program. MT was supported by National Science Foundation grant DEB 0089716 and UC Berkeley's Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science. This work was carried out while ARW was the recipient of an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship and AAH held an ARC Federation Fellowship. | en |
| dc.identifier.citation | Weeks AR, Turelli M, Harcombe WR, Reynolds KT, Hoffmann AA (2007) From Parasite to Mutualist: Rapid Evolution of Wolbachia in Natural Populations of Drosophila. PLoS Biol 5(5): e114. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050114 | en |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.1371/journal.pbio.0050114 | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/2152/20213 | en |
| dc.language.iso | eng | en |
| dc.publisher | Public Library of Science | en |
| dc.rights | Attribution 3.0 United States | en |
| dc.rights | CC-BY | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ | en |
| dc.subject | California | en |
| dc.subject | Drosophila | en |
| dc.subject | Fecundity | en |
| dc.subject | Host-pathogen interactions | en |
| dc.subject | Microbial evolution | en |
| dc.subject | Natural selection | en |
| dc.subject | Wolbachia | en |
| dc.subject | Yeast infections | en |
| dc.title | From Parasite to Mutualist: Rapid Evolution of Wolbachia in Natural Populations of Drosophila | en |
| dc.type | Article | en |