To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Many species of insects bear maternally inherited bacteria which contribute to the physiology and metabolism of their host whereas others bear inherited bacteria which are regarded as parasitic. Parasitic behaviours centre on disruption of the production, survival or fertility of male hosts, through which the microbe is not transmitted. One of the most common of these is early male-killing, where the bacteria kill male embryos they enter. The question arises as to why all inherited symbionts are not male-killers. The male-killing agents identified to date derive from two groups: the Proteobacteria and the Mollicutes. However, bacteria from other groups (Spirochaetes, Flavobacteria) are found to be inherited in insects, but contain no incidence of male-killing. We show here an association of male-killing with a bacterium from one of these groups. The bacterium causing male-killing behaviour in the ladybird Coleomegilla maculata is most closely related to Blattabacterium, a host-beneficial Flavobacteria found in cockroaches and some termites. This result indicates there is little if any taxonomic bar to the evolution of male-killing behaviour. This pattern severely contrasts with the evolution of two other parasitic symbiont behaviours, cytoplasmic incompatibility and the induction of host parthenogenesis, which have been found to be associated exclusively with bacteria from one group: Wolbachia. The result is briefly discussed in the light of the incidence of parasitic and beneficial cytoplasmic elements among insects.
The influence of gamma-irradiation on P element excision and excision-site repair mechanisms was directly tested by embryonic somatic excision assays. Preblastoderm P[ry+, Δ2–3](99B) embryos, having a stable source of somatically active P transposase, were irradiated previous to injection with P excision indicator plasmids. Frequencies of precise or nearly precise P excision increased with gamma-ray doses ranging from 0·5 to 3·5 Gy. Higher doses resulted in frequencies close to that in unirradiated embryos, though considerable embryonic lethality was also evident at these doses. A direct positive interaction between gamma-irradiation and P element activity is concluded.