Wolbachia and DNA Barcoding Insects: Patterns, Potential, and Problems
Open Access
- 2 May 2012
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Public Library of Science (PLoS) in PLOS ONE
- Vol. 7 (5), e36514
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036514
Abstract
Wolbachia is a genus of bacterial endosymbionts that impacts the breeding systems of their hosts. Wolbachia can confuse the patterns of mitochondrial variation, including DNA barcodes, because it influences the pathways through which mitochondria are inherited. We examined the extent to which these endosymbionts are detected in routine DNA barcoding, assessed their impact upon the insect sequence divergence and identification accuracy, and considered the variation present in Wolbachia COI. Using both standard PCR assays (Wolbachia surface coding protein – wsp), and bacterial COI fragments we found evidence of Wolbachia in insect total genomic extracts created for DNA barcoding library construction. When >2 million insect COI trace files were examined on the Barcode of Life Datasystem (BOLD) Wolbachia COI was present in 0.16% of the cases. It is possible to generate Wolbachia COI using standard insect primers; however, that amplicon was never confused with the COI of the host. Wolbachia alleles recovered were predominantly Supergroup A and were broadly distributed geographically and phylogenetically. We conclude that the presence of the Wolbachia DNA in total genomic extracts made from insects is unlikely to compromise the accuracy of the DNA barcode library; in fact, the ability to query this DNA library (the database and the extracts) for endosymbionts is one of the ancillary benefits of such a large scale endeavor – for which we provide several examples. It is our conclusion that regular assays for Wolbachia presence and type can, and should, be adopted by large scale insect barcoding initiatives. While COI is one of the five multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) genes used for categorizing Wolbachia, there is limited overlap with the eukaryotic DNA barcode region.Keywords
This publication has 45 references indexed in Scilit:
- Bacterial symbionts in insects or the story of communities affecting communitiesPhilosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2011
- DNA barcode accumulation curves for understudied taxa and areasMolecular Ecology Resources, 2009
- High mitochondrial diversity in geographically widespread butterflies of Madagascar: A test of the DNA barcoding approachMolecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 2009
- Extreme diversity of tropical parasitoid wasps exposed by iterative integration of natural history, DNA barcoding, morphology, and collectionsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2008
- How many species are infected with Wolbachia? – a statistical analysis of current dataFEMS Microbiology Letters, 2008
- Are we underestimating the diversity and incidence of insect bacterial symbionts? A case study in ladybird beetlesBiology Letters, 2007
- DNA barcoding cannot reliably identify species of the blowfly genusProtocalliphora(Diptera: Calliphoridae)Proceedings Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2007
- DNA barcodes affirm that 16 species of apparently generalist tropical parasitoid flies (Diptera, Tachinidae) are not all generalistsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007
- bold: The Barcode of Life Data System (http://www.barcodinglife.org)Molecular Ecology Notes, 2007
- Multilocus Sequence Typing System for the EndosymbiontWolbachia pipientisApplied and Environmental Microbiology, 2006