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Actual and potential host range of Arsenophonus nasoniae in an ecological guild of filth flies and their parasitic wasps

The gammaproteobacterium Arsenophonus nasoniae infects Nasonia vitripennis (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae), a parasitic wasp that attacks filth flies. This bacterium kills virtually all male offspring of infected females. Female wasps transmit A. nasoniae both vertically (from mother to offspring) and horizontally (to unrelated Nasonia developing in the same fly). This latter mode may enable the bacterium to colonize novel species and spread throughout a filth fly-parasitoid guild. This spread may be important for maintenance of the bacterium. The ecology of novel hosts may be significantly impacted by infection. The actual and potential host range of A. nasoniae was assessed. I used Arsenophonus-specific primers to screen a large sample of filth flies and their parasitoids. The bacterium infects a wide range of wasp species in the environment. The potential host range was determined by inoculating three wasp and one fly species with an isolate of A. nasoniae from Lethbridge, AB. The bacterium successfully infected all insects and was transmitted by two wasp species. It reduced host longevity, but did not kill males, in Trichomalopsis sarcophagae. It also caused pupal mortality in Musca domestica.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/2684
Date30 April 2010
CreatorsTaylor, Graeme Patrick
ContributorsPerlman, Steven John
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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