Endosymbiotic Bacteria Spiroplasma and Wolbachia in a Laboratory-Reared Insect Collection

Many insect and other arthropod species are maintained as non-model laboratory stocks and are used for fundamental and applied studies. Their biology may be affected by symbionts, such as <i>Wolbachia</i> and <i>Spiroplasma</i>. Thirty stocks of different insect species that are maintained at the Laboratory of biological control of phytophagous and phytopathogens in the Siberian Federal Scientific Centre of Agro-BioTechnologies were screened to find <i>Spiroplasma</i>/<i>Wolbachia</i>-host associations. We used <i>16S</i> rDNA and <i>fusA</i> loci for <i>Spiroplasma</i> characterization and five MLST genes for <i>Wolbachia</i>. Seven out of thirty stocks harbored symbionts. Five stocks were infected with only <i>Wolbachia</i>, one with only <i>Spiroplasma</i>, and one with both symbionts. Two stocks were occasionally characterized by false-positive signals of <i>Spiroplasma</i> infection that were explained by contamination from food sources, viz. infected insects. Five <i>Wolbachia</i> isolates belonged to supergroup B and one to supergroup A. Only the MLST haplotype of <i>Nabis ferus</i> was previously known (ST-522), while the other haplotypes contained new alleles. One <i>Spiroplasma</i> isolate was clustered in the Ixodetis clade and another was basal to the Apis clade. We noted the importance of non-model insects for fundamental studies of host-symbiont interactions and their significance for applied research and practice.