Fighting back against male-killers.
Male-killing endosymbionts create a genetic black hole into which host nuclear genes vanish. In a recent paper, Hornett et al. transferred male-killing Wolbachia between different strains of the butterfly Hypolimnas bolina through hybridization and backcrossing. Their results provide unambiguous evidence of genetic variation for resistance to male-killers. A possible consequence of such variation is that male-killing might appear and disappear quickly on an evolutionary timescale.
Jaenike
John
J
Department of Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA. joja@mail.rochester.edu
D000818:Animals; D002080:Butterflies / Q000235:genetics* / Q000382:microbiology*; D005260:Female; D014644:Genetic Variation; D007178:Inbreeding; D008297:Male; D012744:Sex Ratio; D020577:Wolbachia / Q000472:pathogenicity* / Q000502:physiology