While Wolbachia, an intracellular bacterial symbiont, is primarily transmitted maternally in arthropods, horizontal transmission between species has been commonly documented. We examined kleptoparasitism as a potential mechanism for Wolbachia horizontal transmission, using ant crickets and their host ants as the model system. We compared prevalence and diversity of Wolbachia across multiple ant cricket species with different degrees of host specificity/integration level. Our analyses revealed at least three cases of inter-ordinal Wolbachia transfer among ant and ant crickets, and also showed that ant cricket species with high host-integration and host-specificity tend to harbor a higher Wolbachia prevalence and diversity than other types of ant crickets. This study provides empirical evidence that distribution of Wolbachia across ant crickets is largely attributable to horizontal transmission, but also elucidates the role of intimate ecological association in successful Wolbachia horizontal transmission.

中文翻译：

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蚂蚁和蚂蚁Cri之间的Wolbachia常见水平传播的证据：Kleptoparasitism已添加到列表中。

虽然Wolbachia是一种细胞内细菌共生体，主要在节肢动物中通过母体传播，但物种之间的水平传播已得到了广泛报道。我们使用蚂蚁和它们的宿主蚂蚁作为模型系统，研究了kleptoparasitism是Wolbachia水平传播的潜在机制。我们比较了不同宿主特异性/整合水平的多种蚂蚁物种的Wolbachia患病率和多样性。我们的分析显示，至少有3例间沃尔夫巴赫氏菌在蚂蚁和蚂蚁之间转移，并且还表明具有高宿主整合度和宿主特异性的蚂蚁species物种倾向于携带更高的沃尔巴赫菌流行性和多样性要比其他类型的蚂蚁。高。这项研究提供了经验证据，表明沃尔巴赫菌在整个蚂蚁中的分布主要归因于水平传播，但也阐明了紧密的生态联系在成功的沃尔巴赫菌水平传播中的作用。