Wolbachia is one of the most successful endosymbiotic bacteria of arthropods. Known as the ‘master of manipulation’, Wolbachia can induce a wide range of phenotypes in its host that can have far-reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences and may be exploited for disease and pest control. However, our knowledge of Wolbachia's distribution and the infection rate is unevenly distributed across arthropod groups such as scale insects. We fitted a distribution of within-species prevalence of Wolbachia to our data and compared it to distributions fitted to an up-to-date dataset compiled from surveys across all arthropods. The estimated distribution parameters indicate a Wolbachia infection frequency of 43.6% (at a 10% prevalence threshold) in scale insects. Prevalence of Wolbachia in scale insects follows a distribution similar to exponential decline (most species are predicted to have low prevalence infections), in contrast to the U-shaped distribution estimated for other taxa (most species have a very low or very high prevalence). We observed no significant associations between Wolbachia infection and scale insect traits. Finally, we screened for Wolbachia in scale insect's ecological associates. We found a positive correlation between Wolbachia infection in scale insects and their ant associates, pointing to a possible route of horizontal transfer of Wolbachia.

中文翻译：

---

介壳虫中的沃尔巴克氏体：一种独特的感染频率模式和通过蚂蚁伙伴的潜在转移途径

沃尔巴克氏体是最成功的节肢动物内共生细菌之一。被称为“操纵大师”的沃尔巴克氏体可以在其宿主中诱导广泛的表型，这些表型可以产生深远的生态和进化后果，并可用于疾病和害虫控制。然而，我们对沃尔巴克氏体分布和感染率的了解在介壳虫等节肢动物群中分布不均。我们将Wolbachia的种内流行分布拟合到我们的数据中，并将其与拟合到所有节肢动物调查中汇编的最新数据集的分布进行比较。估计的分布参数表明Wolbachia介壳虫的感染频率为 43.6%（以 10% 的流行阈值）。介壳虫中沃尔巴克氏体的流行率遵循类似于指数下降的分布（预计大多数物种的感染流行率较低），而其他分类群估计的 U 形分布（大多数物种的流行率非常低或非常高）。我们观察到Wolbachia感染与介壳虫性状之间没有显着关联。最后，我们在介壳虫的生态伙伴中筛选了沃尔巴克氏体。我们发现介壳虫中的沃尔巴克氏体感染与其蚁群呈正相关，表明了沃尔巴克氏体水平转移的可能途径。