Wolbachia

Bereczki, Judit, Rácz, Rita, Varga, Zoltán & Tóth, János P., 2015, Controversial patterns of Wolbachia infestation in the social parasitic Maculinea butterflies (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae), Organisms Diversity & Evolution (New York, N. Y.) 15 (3), pp. 591-607 : 595-596

Wolbachia infection

The prevalence of Wolbachia was 100 % both in M. alcon and M. arion irrespective of phenology or differential food plant usage while the infection level was 36.2 % in M. nausithous and 14.4 % in M. teleius (Online Resource 1; Fig. 1a, b ). In Wolbachia infestation of the latter two species, we could not detect any geographical pattern ( Fig. 1b ).

All M. alcon individuals were infected with a single Wolbachia strain which belonged to supergroup B ( Table 1; Fig. 2). The WSP allele no. 575 and the sequence type (ST) no. 235 were identified in M. alcon . Similarly, all M. arion individuals were infected with only one strain which belonged to supergroup A ( Table 1; Fig. 2). A new WSP allele was identified from this species and submitted to the Wolbachia MLST database (no. 685). The sequence type (ST) no. 403 was found in M. arion .

M. nausithous harboured various 16S rRNA sequences belonging to both Wolbachia supergroups A and B (Fig. 2; Table 2). Additionally, highly divergent sequences occurred even in a single population of this species. Similarly, M. teleius contained different 16S rRNA sequences belonging to both supergroups A and B (Fig. 2; Table 2). The parameters of 16S rRNA gene diversity were proved to be higher in M. teleius than in M. nausithous ( Table 2). Additionally, neutrality tests indicated significantly positive departure from the neutral model of molecular evolution.

Figures

Fig. 1 Sampling sites. See the abbreviations in Online Resource 1. a M. alcon and M.arion. The infection rate is 100 % in both species. b M.nausithous and M. teleius. The infection rate is indicated with the shade of symbols representing populations. Darker symbols show higher infection rate