Facultative symbiont provides fitness benefits to the grain aphid, but not to parasitoid offspring - INRAE - Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Entomologia Generalis Année : 2024

Facultative symbiont provides fitness benefits to the grain aphid, but not to parasitoid offspring

Huimin Zhu
  • Fonction : co premier-auteur
Delu Li
  • Fonction : co premier-auteur
Chen Luo
  • Fonction : Auteur correspondant

Résumé

Symbiotic microbes have evolved to become an important source of phenotypic plasticity in host insects. In aphids, facultative endosymbionts have been found capable of influencing host phenotypes, such as against natural enemies and host fitness. However, the related evidence has been mainly gathered from a few model organisms, such as the pea aphid. Here, we explored the roles of a common facultative symbiont of the genus Rickettsia in the grain aphid Sitobion avenae. We first observed that Rickettsia-infected aphids (either natural or artificial status) benefit of a higher population increase rate (nearly 1.23-fold) than the Rickettsia-free aphids from the same genetic background. While Rickettsia presence did not confer resistance against the aphid parasitoid Aphidius gifuensis, emerged wasps from Rickettsia-infected aphids had a significantly reduced weight and their sex ratio was biased toward more female wasps. These results suggest that the presence of the symbiont ameliorates the fitness of its aphid host, but impacts the growth of parasitoid offspring and the parasitoid sex-ratio in a way that could be detrimental for the aphid. This demonstrates that the presence of a facultative symbiont may lead to both positive and negative trade-offs, which may ultimately not affect the fitness of the host population as they are compensatory.
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Dates et versions

hal-04433760 , version 1 (02-02-2024)

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Huimin Zhu, Delu Li, Nicolas Desneux, Jean-Luc Gatti, Zuqing Hu, et al.. Facultative symbiont provides fitness benefits to the grain aphid, but not to parasitoid offspring. Entomologia Generalis, 2024, ⟨10.1127/entomologia/2023/2146⟩. ⟨hal-04433760⟩
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