Wolbachia

Tóth, Judit Bereczki Szilárd Póliska Alex Váradi János P., 2020, Incipient sympatric speciation via host race formation in Phengaris arion (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae), Organisms Diversity & Evolution (New York, N. Y.) 20 (1), pp. 63-76 : 68

Wolbachia screening

The prevalence of Wolbachia was 98.6%. While all summer - type individuals proved to be infected, we could not detect Wolbachia in two spring - type specimens (see Suppl. Table S1). All infected samples harboured a single strain (allele No. 685). The PCR products from Wolbachia screening showed a systematic trend as only faint bands were observed in the spring - type specimens referring to the low abundance of the bacterium ( Fig. 5a ). On the contrary, strong bands were present in the analysed summer arion referring to high Wolbachia abundance. When we quantified this difference by the RT-Q-PCR method, we detected significantly smaller amounts of Wolbachia in the spring arion than in the summer type comparing the two forms to each other or carrying out pairwise comparisons by sampling sites ( Fig. 5b ). The summer type contained 29 times more Wolbachia than the spring form considering the median of the Wolbachia quantity in each type of P. arion .

Figures

Fig. 5 Differences in Wolbachia infestation between the spring and the summer type of P. arion: a differences between the spring and the summer-type specimens from Korlát hill in the Wolbachia quantity on 1% agarose gel; b box-plots showing the difference in infestation levels as