In the pill bug Armadillidium vulgare (Crustacea, Oniscidea), Wolbachia facilitates its spread through vertical transmission via the eggs by inducing feminization of genetic males. The spread of feminizing Wolbachia within and across populations is therefore expected to influence mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genetic structure by hitchhiking. To test this hypothesis, we analysed nuclear and mtDNA genetic structure, and Wolbachia prevalence in 13 populations of the pill bug host. Wolbachia prevalence (ranging from 0% to 100% of sampled females) was highly variable among populations. All three Wolbachia strains previously observed in A. vulgare were present (wVulC, wVulM and wVulP) with wVulC being the most prevalent (nine of 13 populations). The host showed a genetic structure on five microsatellite loci that is compatible with isolation by distance. The strong genetic structure observed on host mtDNA was correlated with Wolbachia prevalence: three mitotypes were in strong linkage disequilibrium with the three strains of Wolbachia. Neutrality tests showed that the mtDNA polymorphism is not neutral, and we thus suggest that this unusual pattern of mtDNA polymorphism found in A. vulgare was due to Wolbachia.
Constitutive defense mechanisms are critical to the understanding of defense mechanisms in conifers because they constitute the first barrier to attacks by insect pests. In interior spruce, trees that are putatively resistant and susceptible to attacks by white pine weevil (Pissodes strobi) typically exhibit constitutive differences in traits such as resin duct size and number, bark thickness, and terpene content. To improve our knowledge of their genetic basis, we compared globally the constitutive expression levels of 17,825 genes between 20 putatively resistant and 20 putatively susceptible interior spruce trees from the British Columbia tree improvement program. We identified 54 upregulated and 137 downregulated genes in resistant phenotypes, relative to susceptible phenotypes, with a maximum fold change of 2.24 and 3.91, respectively. We found a puzzling increase of resistance by downregulated genes, as one would think that “procuring armaments” is the best defense. Also, although terpenes and phenolic compounds play an important role in conifer defense, we found few of these genes to be differentially expressed. We found 15 putative small heat-shock proteins (sHSP) and several other stress-related proteins to be downregulated in resistant trees. Downregulated putative sHSP belong to several sHSP classes and represented 58% of all tested putative sHSP. These proteins are well known to be involved in plant response to various kinds of abiotic stress; however, their role in constitutive resistance is not yet understood. The lack of correspondence between transcriptome profile clusters and phenotype classifications suggests that weevil resistance in spruce is a complex trait.
The common pill bug, Armadillidium vulgare, is known to harbour two distinct strains of the feminizing proteobacteria Wolbachia. In order to study the effect of the presence of Wolbachia on the evolution of A. vulgare populations, we developed and characterized a set of nine polymorphic microsatellite loci from two microsatellite‐enriched genomic libraries. We screened 48 individuals from three French populations and found high genetic variation. Locus‐specific allelic diversity ranged from four to 28 and observed heterozygosity from 0.40 to 1.00, which indicates that these markers can be used to conduct population genetic studies in A. vulgare.
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