ArticleThe ISME journal2020
Intracellular symbionts drive sex ratio in the whitefly by facilitating fertilization and provisioning of B vitamins.
Article in The ISME journal, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 76 citations in OpenAlex.
- A transcription factor regulates development of a bacteria-housing eukaryotic cell through DNA damage mitigation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Food nutrition and facultative endosymbiont modulate dietary breadth of a polyphagous aphid.Insect science · 2026Article
- Comparative genomics and metabolic model analysis of primary and secondary endosymbionts present in different species of whitefly.Journal of insect science (Online) · 2026Article
- Salicylic Acid as a Modulator of Insect Interactions in Tomato Crops.Journal of chemical ecology · 2026Article
- The reduced genome of Candidatus Portiera sp. in Bemisia afer: evolutionary trajectories and functional implications.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Pathogen promotes insect ovarian development by inducing a dual role of host ATPSyn-β.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Effects of antibiotic treatments on symbiotic bacteria and life history traits of Bemisia tabaci and Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae): implications for pest control strategies.Journal of economic entomology · 2025Article
- Pantothenate regulates feeding and reproduction in the malaria vector Anopheles stephensi, with patterns dependent on supplementation scheme and parental nutrition.Parasites & vectors · 2025Article
- A phloem-based defense mechanism linked to elevated riboflavin levels in wild tomato Solanum chmielewskii impedes whitefly nymphal development.The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Detection of Arsenophonus in Glycaspis brimblecombei (Hemiptera: Aphalaridae) populations in Brazil.Brazilian journal of microbiology : [publication of the Brazilian Society for Microbiology] · 2024Article
- microRNA maintains nutrient homeostasis in the symbiont-host interaction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Gut bacteria are essential for development of an invasive bark beetle by regulating glucose transport.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- The plant-sucking insect selects assembly of the gut microbiota from environment to enhance host reproduction.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2024Article
- PacBio Hi-Fi genome assembly of Sipha maydis, a model for the study of multipartite mutualism in insects.Scientific data · 2024Article
- Metabolism, digestion, and horizontal transfer: potential roles and interaction of symbiotic bacteria in the ladybird beetleMicrobiology spectrum · 2024Article
- Article
- Endosymbiont Tremblaya phenacola influences the reproduction of cotton mealybugs by regulating the mechanistic target of rapamycin pathway.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Cardinium symbionts are pervasive in Iranian populations of the spider mite Panonychus ulmi despite inducing an infection cost and no demonstrable reproductive phenotypes when Wolbachia is a symbiotic partner.Experimental & applied acarology · 2023Article
- Egg provisioning explains the penetrance of symbiont-mediated sex allocation distortion in haplodiploids.Heredity · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Symbionts can regulate animal reproduction in multiple ways, but the underlying physiological and biochemical mechanisms remain largely unknown. The presence of multiple lineages of maternally inherited, intracellular symbionts (the primary and secondary symbionts) in terrestrial arthropods is widespread in nature. However, the biological, metabolic, and evolutionary role of co-resident secondary symbionts for hosts is poorly understood. The bacterial symbionts Hamiltonella and Arsenophonus have very high prevalence in two globally important pests, the whiteflies Bemisia tabaci and Trialeurodes vaporariorum, respectively. Both symbionts coexist with the primary symbiont Portiera in the same host cell (bacteriocyte) and are maternally transmitted. We found that elimination of both Hamiltonella and Arsenophonous by antibiotic treatment reduced the percentage of female offspring in whiteflies. Microsatellite genotyping and cytogenetic analysis revealed that symbiont deficiency inhibited fertilization in whiteflies, leading to more haploid males with one maternal allele, which is consistent with distorted sex ratio in whiteflies. Quantification of essential amino acids and B vitamins in whiteflies indicated that symbiont deficiency reduced B vitamin levels, and dietary B vitamin supplementation rescued fitness of whiteflies. This study, for the first time, conclusively demonstrates that these two intracellular symbionts affect sex ratios in their whitefly hosts by regulating fertilization and supplying B vitamins. Our results reveal that both symbionts have the convergent function of regulating reproduction in phylogenetically-distant whitefly species. The 100% frequency, the inability of whiteflies to develop normally without their symbiont, and rescue with B vitamins suggests that both symbionts may be better considered co-primary symbionts.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.