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This study reports the first detection of Wolbachia and yeast-like symbiont (YLS) harbored in Kerria lacca (Kerr), a scale insect, latter of which produces an economically important natural resin, known as lac. Wolbachia was detected using PCR amplification and sequencing of 16S rDNA; and further confirmation and phylogenetic analysis was carried out by fast evolving wsp gene. Neighbor-joining and maximum parsimonious (MP) analysis showed that this strain belongs to subgroup "ori" of Wolbachia super group B of arthropods. Wolbachia of K. lacca is hereby designated as "wKerlac" according to Wolbachia nomenclature system. Histological study revealed the presence of yeast-like endosymbiont, which was also confirmed by PCR amplification of 18S rDNA. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that YLS of K. lacca is quite distinct from YLS of aphid, planthoppers, and beetles. Putative roles of Wolbachia in lecanoid chromosome system of sex determination and in biased sex ratio of K. lacca populations; and YLS in nutritional supplementation and detoxifying substances which are deleterious to K. lacca, are hereby, suggested.

Three molecular marker systems, Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD), Inter-Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) and Sequence-Related Amplified Polymorphism (SRAP) were employed to investigate the genetic structure and diversity among the 14 natural populations of Butea monosperma collected from different geographical regions of India. Detected by 17 RAPD, 15 ISSR and 11 SRAP primer combinations, the proportions of polymorphic bands were 84.2 %, 77.2 % and 91.9 %, respectively, and the mean Nei's genetic distances among the populations were 0.13, 0.10 and 0.13, respectively. Partitioning of genetic variability by Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed that the high genetic diversity was distributed within the populations. AMOVA also revealed that the coefficient of gene differentiation among populations based on FST was very high irrespective of markers used. The overall gene flow among populations (Nm) was very low. Cophenetic correlation coefficients of Nei's distance values and clustering pattern by Mental test were statistically significant for all three marker systems used but poor fit for ISSR data than for RAPD, SRAP and combined data set of all three markers. For all markers, a high similarity in dendrogram topologies was obtained, although some differences were observed with ISSR. The dendrogram obtained by RAPD, SRAP and combined data set of all three markers reflect relationship of most of the populations according to their geographic distribution.

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