Wolbachia

In some species (including some species of wasps and mosquitos), infected males can only mate with infected females. The male's bacteria make the sperm infertile, and then the female's bacteria undo the damage. In some species this causes reduced fertility, in others complete infertility. Infected females are still able to mate with uninfected males, however. The infected female wasps always pass the infection on to their offspring. The wasps are also able to mate if given an antibiotic to kill the bacteria. Wasps infected with different strains of Wolbachia may also be made mutually infertile. It is thought that this process is causing a speciation event to occur in the wasps, and that the bacteria are the prime cause.

In other species, the bacteria induce parthenogenesis; females giving birth without mating with the opposite sex. In one species of arthropod, a wood louse, these bacteria even change male embryos into females.

The bacteria was first identified in 1924 in a species of mosquito.

More than 16% of insect species in Panama carry this bacteria.

In February 2005, researchers announced that they found three new species of Wolbachia by examining publicly available DNA sequences of seven Drosophila species. [1]

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