John Jaenike

..These findings demonstrate the profound and potentially rapid effects of defensive symbionts, which are increasingly recognized as major players in the ecology of species interactions...

..If selection acts on the combination of these two endosymbionts, they may be in the early stages of evolution of a more complex, cooperative association...

..Overall, our data suggest that the association between D. innubila and male-killing Wolbachia is ecologically dynamic within local populations, but evolutionarily coherent across the species as a whole...

..innubila at the host population level suggest that selection among cytoplasmic lineages is likely to overwhelm the results of selection within lineages...

..Thus, this MK endosymbiont can provide direct, MK-independent fitness benefits to infected female hosts in addition to possible benefits mediated via MK...

..The recent spread of Spiroplasma in natural populations of D. neotestacea coincides with a decline in the prevalence of Howardula parasitism in the wild...

..Given the widespread occurrence of Wolbachia among insects, it thus appears that there are multiple ways by which these endosymbionts may directly and indirectly contribute to reproductive isolation and speciation...

..Our results suggest that horizontal transmission of Wolbachia can be influenced by host ecology, thus leading to partial restriction of Wolbachia strains or strain groups to particular guilds of insects...

..MK in D. subquinaria is unusual in that the male offspring of infected females die during the larval stage, not as embryos. These findings suggest that MK and CI may share a similar underlying molecular basis...

..Finally, we suggest three alternative hypotheses to account for the approximately lognormal distribution of Wolbachia density among wild flies...

..However, the transmission rate of the infection from recipient flies to their offspring was low, perhaps due to low Spiroplasma density in the recipient flies...

..neotestacea and in which females are rendered completely sterile by nematode parasitism. Thus, a major adaptation within D. putrida could arise via lateral transmission of a heritable symbiont from D. neotestacea...

..Their results provide unambiguous evidence of genetic variation for resistance to male-killers. A possible consequence of such variation is that male-killing might appear and disappear quickly on an evolutionary timescale...

..innubila-Wolbachia association is likely at a stable equilibrium that is maintained by imperfect maternal transmission of the bacteria rather than partial resistance in the host species...

..The time is ripe for the development of a coherent theory of the 'population genetics' of beneficial heritable symbionts...

..Thus, long-term projections of fisheries collapse are highly dependent on the specific statistical model used...

..Thus, selection exerted by nematode parasites may influence pigmentation patterns and other, genetically correlated traits in natural populations D. falleni...