Wolbachia pipientis associated to tephritid fruit fly pests: from basic research to 2 applications

MATEOS; MARTINEZ; LANZAVECCHIA; C CONTE; DIEGO F SEGURA; GEORGE TSIAMIS; BOURTZIS, KOSTAS

Frontiers in Microbiology

Frontiers in Microbiology

Lugar: Lausanne; Año: 2020

Members of the true fruit flies (family Tephritidae) are among the most serious26 agricultural pests worldwide, whose control and management demands large and costly27 international efforts. The need for cost-effective and environmentally-friendly integrated28 pest management (IPM) has led to the development and implementation of autocidal29 control strategies. Autocidal approaches include the widely used sterile insect technique30 (SIT) and the incompatible insect technique (IIT). IIT relies on maternally transmitted31 bacteria (namely Wolbachia), to cause a conditional sterility in crosses between released32 mass-reared Wolbachia-infected males and wild females, which are either uninfected or33 infected with a different Wolbachia strain (i.e., cytoplasmic incompatibility; CI). Herein,34 we review the current state of knowledge on Wolbachia-tephritid interactions including35 infection prevalence in wild populations, phenotypic consequences, and their impact on36 life history traits. Numerous pest tephritid species are reported to harbor Wolbachia37 infections, with a subset exhibiting high prevalence. T