Fifty-year trend towards suppression of Wolbachia-induced male-killing by its butterfly host, Hypolimnas bolina.

ABSTRACT: Some intracellular symbionts of arthropods induce a variety of reproductive alterations in their hosts, and the alterations tend to spread easily within the host populations. A few cases involving the spread of alteration-inducing Wolbachia bacteria in natural populations with time have been reported, but the investigations on the increasing trend in counteracting the bacterial effect on hosts in natural populations (i.e., increased resistance in hosts against the alterations) have been limited. In the present study, the prevalence of an alteration, killing of male Hypolimnas bolina (L.) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) butterflies by their inherited Wolbachia strain in the wild in Japan, was surveyed over a continuous 50-year period, which is far longer than ever before analyzed in studies of d

SUBMITTER: Mitsuhashi W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3281488 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature