Plant-mediated interspecific horizontal transmission of an intracellular symbiont in insects.

ABSTRACT: Intracellular reproductive manipulators, such as Candidatus Cardinium and Wolbachia are vertically transmitted to progeny but rarely show co-speciation with the host. In sap-feeding insects, plant tissues have been proposed as alternative horizontal routes of interspecific transmission, but experimental evidence is limited. Here we report results from experiments that show that Cardinium is horizontally transmitted between different phloem sap-feeding insect species through plants. Quantitative PCR and in situ hybridization experiments indicated that the leafhopper Scaphoideus titanus releases Cardinium from its salivary glands during feeding on both artificial media and grapevine leaves. Successional time-course feeding experiments with S. titanus initially fed sugar solutions or small ar

SUBMITTER: Gonella E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4643326 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature