Many insects and other animals carry microbial endosymbionts that influence their reproduction and fitness. These relationships only persist if endosymbionts are reliably transmitted from one host generation to the next. Wolbachia are maternally transmitted endosymbionts found in most insect species, but transmission rates can vary across environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany insects and other animals carry microbial endosymbionts that influence their reproduction and fitness. These relationships only persist if endosymbionts are reliably transmitted from one host generation to the next. are maternally transmitted endosymbionts found in most insect species, but transmission rates can vary across environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOur understanding of the limits of animal life is continually revised by scientific exploration of extreme environments. Here we report the discovery of mummified cadavers of leaf-eared mice, Phyllotis vaccarum, from the summits of three different Andean volcanoes at elevations 6,029-6,233 m above sea level in the Puna de Atacama in Chile and Argentina. Such extreme elevations were previously assumed to be completely uninhabitable by mammals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnimals serve as hosts for complex communities of microorganisms, including endosymbionts that live inside their cells. bacteria are perhaps the most common endosymbionts, manipulating host reproduction to propagate. Many cause cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), which results in reduced egg hatch when uninfected females mate with infected males.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Drosophila montium species group is a clade of 94 named species, closely related to the model species D. melanogaster. The montium species group is distributed over a broad geographic range throughout Asia, Africa, and Australasia.
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