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Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Ecology and Evolution, May 2016
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (80th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (70th percentile)

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Title
Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths
Published in
BMC Ecology and Evolution, May 2016
DOI 10.1186/s12862-016-0660-x
Pubmed ID
Authors

Muhammad Z. Ahmed, Jesse W. Breinholt, Akito Y. Kawahara

Abstract

Wolbachia is one of the most widespread bacteria on Earth. Previous research on Wolbachia-host interactions indicates that the bacterium is typically transferred vertically, from mother to offspring, through the egg cytoplasm. Although horizontal transmission of Wolbachia from one species to another is reported to be common in arthropods, limited direct ecological evidence is available. In this study, we examine horizontal transmission of Wolbachia using a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) strains dataset and used Wolbachia and Lepidoptera genomes to search for evidence for lateral gene transfer (LGT) in Lepidoptera, one of the most diverse cosmopolitan insect orders. We constructed a phylogeny of arthropod-associated MLST Wolbachia strains and calibrated the age of Wolbachia strains associated with lepidopteran species. Our results reveal inter-specific, inter-generic, inter-familial, and inter-ordinal horizontal transmission of Wolbachia strains, without discernible geographic patterns. We found at least seven probable cases of horizontal transmission among 31 species within Lepidoptera and between Lepidoptera and other arthropod hosts. The divergence time analysis revealed that Wolbachia is recently (22.6-4.7 mya, 95 % HPD) introduced in Lepidoptera. Analysis of nine Lepidoptera genomes (Bombyx mori, Danaus plexippus, Heliconius melpomene, Manduca sexta, Melitaea cinxia, Papilio glaucus, P. polytes, P. xuthus and Plutella xylostella) yielded one possible instance of Wolbachia LGT. Our results provide evidence of high incidence of identical and multiple strains of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths, adding Lepidoptera to the growing body of evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia. This study demonstrates interesting dynamics of this remarkable and influential microorganism.

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The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 14 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 225 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Brazil 2 <1%
Unknown 223 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 44 20%
Student > Bachelor 36 16%
Researcher 28 12%
Student > Master 21 9%
Unspecified 12 5%
Other 28 12%
Unknown 56 25%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 77 34%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 48 21%
Unspecified 16 7%
Environmental Science 5 2%
Immunology and Microbiology 4 2%
Other 12 5%
Unknown 63 28%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 9. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 June 2021.
All research outputs
#4,300,739
of 25,373,627 outputs
Outputs from BMC Ecology and Evolution
#1,102
of 3,714 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#70,027
of 353,024 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Ecology and Evolution
#24
of 80 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,373,627 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 83rd percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,714 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 353,024 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 80 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its contemporaries.