Wolbachia

Wolbachia (Bacteria : Proteobacteria : Alphaproteobacteria : Rickettsiales : Rickettsiaceae : Wolbachia : Wolbachia pipientis) is a naturally occurring endosymbiont in many species of Arthropods and Nematodes (Anonymous 2004).

Wolbachia are a distant relative of mitochondria which has an Alphaproteobacteria endosymbiont origin (Ferla et al. 2013).

Wolbachia was first discovered in Culex mosquitoes (Hertig and Wolbach 1924).

A mismatch between Wolbachia strains can result in Cytoplasmic Incompatibility (CI) of the host insect (Zabalou et al. 2004). This results in a loss of paternal chromosomes and can either be lethal or result in male offspring in haplo-diplo sex determination species.

Wolbachia can also modify the host's immune response (Pinto et al. 2012) and vector competence (Jupatanakul et al. 2014).

Wolbachia based cytoplasmic incompatibility and altered vector competence has been used in genetic pest management applications (Hoffmann et al. 2011).