Donald Price (Life Sciences) led a team of scientists, including his previous graduate students and post-doctoral researcher associates, from the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Geological Survey Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center, the Hawaii Division of Forestry & Wildlife Native Ecosystem Protection and Management Hawaii Invertebrate Program, and UNLV. They published an article in the July 2023 issue of Genes titled, “The Transmission Patterns of the Endosymbiont Wolbachia within the Hawaiian Drosophilidae Adaptive Radiation.”
Wolbachia, a ubiquitous endosymbiont of arthropods and nematodes, can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on host fitness. They documented the occurrence and patterns of transmission of Wolbachia within the Hawaiian Drosophilidae and examined the potential contributions of Wolbachia to the rapid diversification of their hosts. They demonstrated that Wolbachia strain diversity within Hawaiian Drosophilidae hosts can be explained by vertical (e.g., co-speciation) and horizontal (e.g., host switch) modes of transmission. They also showed that transmission is associated with the preferred oviposition substrate of the host, but not the host’s plant family or island of occurrence. Hawaiian Drosophilid include species of conservation concern, with 13 species listed as endangered and 1 listed as threatened, knowledge of Wolbachia strain types, infection status, and potential for superinfection could assist with conservation breeding programs designed to bolster population sizes, especially when wild populations are supplemented with laboratory-reared, translocated individuals.
