DOI: 10.5061/dryad.370q9
title: Data from: Macroevolutionary persistence of heritable endosymbionts: acquisition, retention, and expression of adaptive phenotypes in Spiroplasma

description: The phylogenetic incongruence between insects and their facultative
 maternally transmitted endosymbionts indicates that these infections are
 generally short-lived evolutionarily. Therefore, long-term persistence of
 many endosymbionts must depend on their ability to colonize and spread
 within new host species. At least 17 species of Drosophila are infected
 with endosymbiotic Spiroplasma that have various phenotypic effects. We
 transinfected five strains of Spiroplasma from three divergent clades into
 Drosophila neotestacea to test their capacity to spread in a novel host. A
 strain that causes male killing in Drosophila melanogaster (its native
 host) also does so in D. neotestacea, even though these host species
 diverged 40–60 mya. A strain native to D. neotestacea (designated sNeo)
 and the two other strains of the poulsonii clade of Spiroplasma confer
 resistance to wasp parasitism, suggesting that this trait may be ancestral
 within this clade of Spiroplasma. Conversely, no strain other than sNeo
 conferred resistance to the sterilizing effects of nematode parasitism,
 suggesting that nematode resistance is a recently derived condition. The
 apparent addition of nematode resistance to a Spiroplasma lineage that
 already confers resistance to wasp parasitism suggests endosymbionts can
 increase the repertoire of traits conducive to their spread. The capacity
 of an endosymbiont to undergo maternal transmission and express adaptive
 phenotypes in novel hosts, without requiring a period of host–symbiont
 co-evolution, enables the spread of such symbionts immediately after the
 colonization of a new host. This could be critical for the
 macroevolutionary persistence of facultative endosymbionts whose sojourn
 times within individual host species are relatively brief.
description: Nematode Resistance
 AssayThis excel datasheet
 contains the results of the lab fitness assay for nematode resistance.
 These data include the egg numbers of females of Drosophila neotestacea
 injected with different strains of Spiroplasma, when they are parasitized
 by the nematode Howardula aoronymphium, or are unparasitized. The
 experiment was run twice, and data were collected for females at two ages
 (1 and 2 weeks old).NematodeResistanceDryad.xlsxWasp Resistance AssayThis is an excel spreadsheet containing the data from a lab fitness assay for wasp resistance. The data include numbers of emerging flies and wasps from vials of individual Drosophila neotestacea of different genetic backgrounds (fly strain) injected with different Spiroplasma strains (spiro strain) and parasitized by different wasp strains (wasp strain). The experiment was run twice, and for the second experiment, the total number of pupal cases were recorded as well.WaspResistanceDryad.xlsxTransmission Fidelity AssayThis excel datasheet contains the data on the lab assay of Spiroplasma transmission fidelity of different strains of Spiroplasma in D. neotestacea (fly line = genetic background). The infection status of Wolbachia (W) is included, as well as the number of offspring infected (determined by PCR screening) from each Spiroplasma-infected mother.TransmissionFidelityDryad.xlsxSex Ratio AssayThis excel file contains the data of the sex-ratio assay for D. neotestacea of different genetic backgrounds injected with the male-killing Spiroplasma strain (MRSO). The sex-ratio of the offspring of uninfected mothers mated to specific males lines (which were previously mated to the injected females) was also determined to rule out meiotic drive.SexRatioDryad.xlsxQPCR AssayThis excel datasheet contains the data for the absolute qPCR assay (Spiroplasma copy number per fly) of the poulsonii Spiroplasma strains in D. neotestacea of two genetic backgrounds. Also included are the number of generations post-injection of the flies assayed, as well as their age, Wolbachia infection status, and the qPCR plate on which they were run.QPCRDryad.xlsxSpiroplasma_alignmentsThis file contains nexus alignment files for each individual Spiroplasma locus (16S, RpoB, ParE, FtsZ, SpoT, and FruR) as well as all of the sequences concatenated.Spiroplasma_tree_filesThis data file contains the tree files (in Newick tree format) for each Spiroplasma locus (16S, RpoB, ParE, FtsZ, SpoT, and FruR) as well as the phylogeny of the concatenated set of loci.