Prevalence rates of Wolbachia endosymbiotic bacterium in natural populations of Ostrinia Nubilalis and Ostrinia Scapulalis (Lepidoptera: Pyraloidea: Crambidae) in South-Western Russia

Abstract

Background. Endosymbiotic bacteria of the genus Wolbachia are widespread in arthropods and often cause reproductive abnormalities in lepidopteran insects, including corn borers of the genus Ostrinia. Wolbachia-Ostrinia is a promising model for studies of parasite-host interactions yet parasite prevalence in natural insect host populations remains unknown. Materials and Methods. Molecular genetic screening and statistical analysis is applied to evaluate prevalence rates of Wolbachia in sympatric populations of two corn borer species. Individual genomic DNA samples were extracted from last instar larvae collected in nature from different forage plants. For each sample of DNA showing positive signal with insect-specific primers the detection is performed using three diagnostic loci of Wolbachia: 16SrRNA, gatB and fbpA. Results. Wolbachia-positive signal is obtained for 13.5% larvae of Ostrinia nubilalis (N = 141) and 31.9% larvae of Ostrinia scapulalis (N = 138). In different localities the Wolbachia prevalence ranged from 2.9% (N = 34) to 65.8% (N = 38). Significantly higher rates of Wolbachia prevalence in insects from mugwort and hemp (O. scapulalis) as compared to those from corn (O. nubilalis) are revealed in three out of four localities. Conclusions. Endosymbiotic bacteria of the genus Wolbachia are revealed in natural populations of corn borers for the first time for Eastern Europe. The prevalence rates can be high and this should be taken into consideration when reproductive isolation is examined in population of these hosts as well as establishment of laboratory cultures is performed.

Invasive mosquito species Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus: genetics (COI, ITS2), Wolbachia and Dirofilaria infections

“…The PCR fragment corresponding to the wAlbA strain was one of 379 bp, and to the wAlbB strain -of 501 bp. Validity evaluation for the received data on bacterial contamination in the samples was carried out using the Fischer accuracy test with the error margin set for N > 10 ( Tokarev et al, 2017).…”

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“…The presence of endosymbiotic bacteria of the genus of Wolbachia was also found in populations of stem borers of the genus Ostrinia. In various geographic populations, endosymbiont prevalence ranged from 2.9 (N=34) to 65.8 % (N=38), with three of the four habitats showing a significantly higher level of infection for O. scapulalis as compared to O. nubilalis (Tokarev et al, 2017). Pieris rapae in Japan was infected with Wolbachia with the prevalence of 0-3 % .…”

“…The effects of Wolbachia on insects including Lepidoptera, are very diverse (Hiroki et al, 2004;Charlat et al, 2006Charlat et al, , 2007Narita et al, 2007;Graham, Wilson, 2012;Salunkhe et al, 2014;Arai et al, 2019), and the study of these bacteria is of interest both from theoretical and practical points of view. The prevalence of Wolbachia in lepidopteran populations varies from almost complete absence to 100 % infection Salunke et al, 2012;Ahmed et al, 2015;Solovyev et al, 2015;Ilinsky, Kosterin, 2017;Tokarev et al, 2017;Bykov et al, 2020). For example, in Dendrolimus superans, a high level of infection with Wolbachia (69-100 %) has been shown to be maintained in geographically distant populations for several years (Bykov et al, 2020).…”