Publication Date:
2010-11-26
Description:
Color variation within populations of the pea aphid influences relative susceptibility to predators and parasites. We have discovered that infection with a facultative endosymbiont of the genus Rickettsiella changes the insects' body color from red to green in natural populations. Approximately 8% of pea aphids collected in Western Europe carried the Rickettsiella infection. The infection increased amounts of blue-green polycyclic quinones, whereas it had less of an effect on yellow-red carotenoid pigments. The effect of the endosymbiont on body color is expected to influence prey-predator interactions, as well as interactions with other endosymbionts.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Tsuchida, Tsutomu -- Koga, Ryuichi -- Horikawa, Mitsuyo -- Tsunoda, Tetsuto -- Maoka, Takashi -- Matsumoto, Shogo -- Simon, Jean-Christophe -- Fukatsu, Takema -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2010 Nov 19;330(6007):1102-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1195463.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Molecular Entomology Laboratory, RIKEN Advanced Science Institute, Wako 351-0198, Japan. t-tsuchida@riken.jp〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21097935" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Aphids/*microbiology/physiology
;
Carotenoids/metabolism
;
Color
;
Coxiellaceae/classification/*physiology
;
Phylogeny
;
*Symbiosis
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
