Still a Host of Hosts for Wolbachia: Analysis of Recent Data Suggests That 40% of Terrestrial Arthropod Species Are Infected

Wolbachia are intracellular bacteria that manipulate the reproduction of their arthropod hosts in remarkable ways. They are predominantly transmitted vertically from mother to offspring but also occasionally horizontally between species. In doing so, they infect a huge range of arthropod species worldwide. Recently, a statistical analysis estimated the infection frequency of Wolbachia among arthropod hosts to be 66%. At the same time, the authors of this analysis highlighted some weaknesses of the underlying data and concluded that in order to improve the estimate, a larger number of individuals per species should be assayed and species be chosen more randomly. Here we apply the statistical approach to a more…

• DF
  Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

  Award: SFB 618