Wolbachia are endosymbiotic bacteria that are widely present in nematodes and arthropods and sometimes have a significant impact on the evolution, ecology, and biology of their hosts. The co-occurrence of Wolbachia within both Cynipid gall wasps and their parasitoids has rarely been studied. In this study, we report the occurrence of six species of gall wasps and 10 species of their parasitoids in central China. Wolbachia detection using the wsp gene showed that Wolbachia infected two species of gall wasps as well as their parasitoids, indicating that horizontal transmission of Wolbachia occurs between gall wasps and their parasitoids. Given that parasitoids will kill their hosts, Wolbachia may be horizontally transferred from gall wasps to their parasitoids. Using multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis, five new strains of Wolbachia were identified, all of which belonged to supergroup A. The strains of Wolbachia that infected gall wasps were not the same as those that infected their parasitoids. This result indicated that Wolbachia may evolve independently in parasitoids after they have been transferred from the host gall wasps.

沃尔巴氏菌是共生内生细菌，广泛存在于线虫和节肢动物中，有时对其宿主的进化，生态和生物学有重大影响。的共生Wolbachia的两个Cynipid瘿蜂和寄生其内已经很少被研究。在这项研究中，我们报告了华中地区发生了6种胆黄蜂和10种寄生虫。使用wsp基因进行的Wolbachia检测显示，Wolbachia感染了两种黄蜂及其寄生虫，这表明Wolbachia在黄蜂及其寄生虫之间发生了水平传播。鉴于寄生虫会杀死他们的宿主，Wolbachia可能从gall蜂水平转移到它们的寄生虫。使用多基因座序列分型（MLST）分析，鉴定出五株新的Wolbachia菌株，它们均属于超群A。感染胆汁黄蜂的Wolbachia菌株与感染其寄生虫的菌株不同。这个结果表明，沃尔巴氏菌从寄生虫黄蜂中转移出来后，可能会在类寄生虫中独立进化。