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Symbiont-Induced Sexual and Reproductive Manipulation in Insects

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Spectrum of Sex

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Abstract

Some insect symbionts are known to manipulate the reproduction and sexual development of their hosts for their own benefit. To accomplish this, these selfish sex ratio distorters must disturb the host’s sex determination pathways. Recent progress in molecular biological and bioinformatic methods has enabled us to identify the symbiont effectors. In this chapter, we introduce the diversity of insect sex determination systems and dosage compensation systems, both of which are tightly associated with one another. Moreover, we describe highly tuned symbiont strategies for host sexual manipulation by that target the sex determination and/or dosage compensation machineries by taking advantage of their own factors.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Takahiro Fukui and Fumiko Ishizuna for TEM sample preparation and data acquisition. This work was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “Spectrum of the Sex: a continuity of phenotypes between female and male” (17H06431) to S.K.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural and Environmental Biology, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Susumu Katsuma, Kanako Hirota & Tomohiro Muro

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  1. Susumu Katsuma
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  2. Kanako Hirota
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  3. Tomohiro Muro
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Correspondence to Susumu Katsuma .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

    Minoru Tanaka

  2. Graduation School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan

    Makoto Tachibana

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Katsuma, S., Hirota, K., Muro, T. (2022). Symbiont-Induced Sexual and Reproductive Manipulation in Insects. In: Tanaka, M., Tachibana, M. (eds) Spectrum of Sex. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5359-0_11

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