Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
Exp Appl Acarol. 2024 Dec;93(4):803-815. doi: 10.1007/s10493-024-00961-0. Epub 2024 Sep 12.
Heritable endosymbionts widely occur in arthropod and nematode hosts. Among these endosymbionts, Wolbachia has been extensively detected in many arthropods, such as insects and crustaceans. Maternal inheritance is the most basic and dominant mode of transmission of Wolbachia, and it might regulate the reproductive system of the host in four ways: feminization, parthenogenesis, male killing, and cytoplasmic incompatibility. There is a relatively high percentage (10%) of thelytokous species in Oribatida, a suborder under the subclass Acari of arthropods, but the study of the endosymbionts in oribatid mites is almost negligible. In this paper, we detected endosymbiotic bacteria in two parthenogenetic oribatid species, Nothrus anauniensis Canestrini and Fanzago, 1877, which has never been tested for endosymbionts, and Oppiella nova, in which Wolbachia and Cardinium have been reported before. The results showed that Wolbachia was first found in N. anauniensis with an infection rate of 100% across three populations. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Wolbachia in N. anauniensis belonged to the supergroup K, marking the second supergroup of Wolbachia found in oribatid mites. Unlike previous studies, our study did not detect Wolbachia in O. nova, leading to the exclusion of Wolbachia's role in mediating thelytoky in this species.
共生菌在节肢动物和线虫宿主中广泛存在。在这些共生菌中，Wolbachia 广泛存在于许多节肢动物中，如昆虫和甲壳类动物。母系遗传是 Wolbachia 最基本和主要的传播方式，它可能通过四种方式调节宿主的生殖系统：雌性化、孤雌生殖、雄性致死和细胞质不相容。在节肢动物的蜱螨亚纲中，有较高比例（10%）的单性生殖物种，但对食真菌螨内生菌的研究几乎可以忽略不计。在本文中，我们检测了两种从未进行过内生菌检测的单性生殖食真菌螨，即 Nothrus anauniensis Canestrini 和 Fanzago，1877，以及之前报道过 Wolbachia 和 Cardinium 的 Oppiella nova 的共生细菌。结果表明，Wolbachia 首次在 N. anauniensis 中发现，三个种群的感染率均为 100%。系统发育分析表明，N. anauniensis 中的 Wolbachia 属于超级群 K，标志着在食真菌螨中发现的第二个 Wolbachia 超级群。与之前的研究不同，我们的研究未在 O. nova 中检测到 Wolbachia，从而排除了 Wolbachia 在介导该物种单性生殖中的作用。
