Transitions in symbiosis: evidence for environmental acquisition and social transmission within a clade of heritable symbionts.

ABSTRACT: A dynamic continuum exists from free-living environmental microbes to strict host-associated symbionts that are vertically inherited. However, knowledge of the forces that drive transitions in symbiotic lifestyle and transmission mode is lacking. Arsenophonus is a diverse clade of bacterial symbionts, comprising reproductive parasites to coevolving obligate mutualists, in which the predominant mode of transmission is vertical. We describe a symbiosis between a member of the genus Arsenophonus and the Western honey bee. The symbiont shares common genomic and predicted metabolic properties with the male-killing symbiont Arsenophonus nasoniae, however we present multiple lines of evidence that the bee Arsenophonus deviates from a heritable model of transmission. Field sampling uncovered spati

SUBMITTER: Drew GC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8443716 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature