ArticleThe ISME journal2021
Transitions in symbiosis: evidence for environmental acquisition and social transmission within a clade of heritable symbionts.
Article in The ISME journal, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- How Environmental and Ecological Stressors Reprogram Honey Bee Chemistry Through the Microbiome-Metabolome Axis.Insects · 2026Review
- Metagenomic Comparison of Bat Colony Resistomes Across Anthropogenic and Pristine Habitats.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Distinct colony niches shape associated microbiotas in Neotropical stingless bees.Genetics and molecular biology · 2026Article
- Facultative EndosymbiontPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- From insect endosymbiont to phloem colonizer: comparative genomics unveils the lifestyle transition of phytopathogenicmSystems · 2025Article
- The Honeybee Associate Galleria mellonella Can Acquire Arsenophonus apicola Through Oral and Parenteral Infection Routes.Environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Bumble bee gut microbial community structure differs between species and commercial suppliers, but metabolic potential remains largely consistent.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- The role of animal hosts in shaping gut microbiome variation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- The Genome ofInsects · 2024Article
- 'Candidatus Tisiphia' is a widespread Rickettsiaceae symbiont in the mosquito Anopheles plumbeus (Diptera: Culicidae).Environmental microbiology · 2023Article
- Investigation of vertical and horizontal transmission of Spiroplasma in ticks under laboratory conditions.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Social transmission of bacterial symbionts homogenizes the microbiome within and across generations of group-living spiders.ISME communications · 2023Article
- Microbiome variation correlates with the insecticide susceptibility in different geographic strains of a significant agricultural pest, Nilaparvata lugens.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2023Article
- Beehives possess their own distinct microbiomes.Environmental microbiome · 2023Article
- Environment or genetic isolation? An atypical intestinal microbiota in the Maltese honey beeFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Isolation, culture and characterization ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- A short exposure to a semi-natural habitat alleviates the honey bee hive microbial imbalance caused by agricultural stress.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Fidelity varies in the symbiosis between a gutless marine worm and its microbial consortium.Microbiome · 2022Article
- Inheritance through the cytoplasm.Heredity · 2022Review
- Dynamic changes in species richness and community diversity of symbiotic bacteria in five reproductive morphs of cotton aphidFrontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
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 spatial and seasonal dynamics in symbiont prevalence, and rapid infection loss events were observed in field colonies and laboratory individuals. Fluorescent in situ hybridisation showed Arsenophonus localised in the gut, and detection was rare in screens of early honey bee life stages. We directly show horizontal transmission of Arsenophonus between bees under varying social conditions. We conclude that honey bees acquire Arsenophonus through a combination of environmental exposure and social contacts. These findings uncover a key link in the Arsenophonus clades trajectory from free-living ancestral life to obligate mutualism, and provide a foundation for studying transitions in symbiotic lifestyle.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.