We think often of bacteria as the animals sick, but a kind of bacteria, Turbo-charge the sweet potato seems worldwide whitefly, Bemisia Tabaci, a serious insect pest for farmers.
The bacteria, a type of rickettsia, causes infected Whiteflies to to lay more eggs, they grow faster and survival in adulthood into more than non-infected bugs. It caused even more the insects female are born.
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"Instant there is evolution," said Molly Hunter, Professor of Entomology at the University of Arizona senior investigator in a study investigating the strange Super symbionts.
"Our laboratory studies suggest that these bacteria can convert population in a very short time, an insect", Hunter said in a press release of the University of Arizona.
"Rickettsia infected Whiteflies lay more eggs, more survive these eggs, and there are more female than male offspring produce the reproductive manipulation in direction." These effects are not unknown but the power that we found here is unusual, "said Hunter."
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The bacteria was observed in Arizona for 6 years. In the year 2000, only one percent of the Whiteflies have been infected. That figure shot up to 50 percent in 2003. Now, almost all Arizona Whiteflies carry the bacteria.
The bacteria a special gift from mother seems whitefly to their offspring. Hunter found that the bacteria do not move between adults fly, but, that infected, that gave birth to mothers infected baby bugs.
Because the bacteria is propagated only from the mother, it makes sense that the bacteria would develop in order to increase the ratio of women supported. But, that may not be in the interest of the insect in the long term.
"Typically take the sex ratio control away from the host is not a good deal for the host," she said. There's a reason why the most living organisms have equality about same proportions. If there were more female, more men produce each person more offspring produce. "This is one of the reasons why, the a 1: 1-ratio of sex really is common in nature."
You may have seen in your garden Whiteflies. The small white critters as hanging on the underside of the leaf. If you shake the plant, they fly, but eventually back to their shady places under the leaves settle. There, they make A living by the vampire sucking the juices of plants, such as little insect.
The bacteria are even a bad problem make worse. The art of the sweet potato whitefly, which infect them, was called B biotype, already a major problem for farmers throughout the world in which crops are grown.
You let the name fool, the B biotype whitefly not only dine sweet potatoes. And this is exactly the problem. It feeds on over 600 species of plants, so it is never hungry.
"Here in Arizona, it probably starts on weed in spring, and then turns melons, and when melons are finished, move in large numbers on cotton and feeds of, which all summer long," said Hunter. "In the autumn, it goes with vegetables, and so it just stops."
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"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when this new biotype in the South West, the population exploded only, came", Hunter said. "Sometimes could clouds of Whiteflies in the air, see up windscreens gum."
"With integrated pest management practices, many of colleagues here at the UA, developed their effect has decreased enormously, but they are still the worst plague in Arizona cotton industry." If it cotton would be much less spraying not for Whiteflies, farmers, "said Hunter."
Now the small insects that less than 1/16 inch were to measure, are super-powered due to rickettsia bacteria, and an even greater risk. But all hope is not lost, Hunter wonders whether it might be a way to turn the tables.
"It would be interesting to see if by having a germ, which has this great effect in one direction, if it could make you so that it will control the other way, affected by the plague," Hunter said. "Symbionts in a way that the things of less a problem, we could use manage pest populations in a sustainable manner?"
Knocking down Whiteflies would be a great help to the farmers. The insects, fly right, but in fact the members of the order Hemiptera, are more closely related to true bugs and lice, an other pest. And as aphid, leaves their relatives home for fungus the other plants can damage leaves a sticky residue that are. Plus, she transferred over 100 viruses, such as for example the mosaic virus.
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Figure 1: the white sweet potato fly, (Bemisia Tabaci) (Wikimedia Commons).
Figure 2: The white Yam fly, (Bemisia Tabaci) (Wikimedia Commons).
Figure 3: mosaic virus on cabbage (Wikimedia Commons).
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