DOI: 10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wc4
title: Data from: Population-specific effect of Wolbachia on the cost of fungal infection in spider mites

description: Many studies have revealed the ability of the endosymbiotic
 bacterium Wolbachia to protect its arthropod hosts
 against diverse pathogens. However, as Wolbachia may
 also increase the susceptibility of its host to infection, predicting the
 outcome of a particular Wolbachia-host-pathogen interaction
 remains elusive. Yet, understanding such interactions and their
 eco-evolutionary consequences is crucial for disease and pest control
 strategies. Moreover, how natural Wolbachia infections
 affectartificially introduced pathogens for biocontrol has never been
 studied. Tetranychus urticae spider mites are
 herbivorous crop pests, causing severe damage on numerous economically
 important crops. Due to the rapid evolution of pesticide
 resistance, biological control strategies using entomopathogenic
 fungi are being developed. However, although spider mites are
 infected with various Wolbachia strains worldwide,
 whether this endosymbiont protects them from fungi is as yet unknown.
 Here, we compared the survival of two populations, treated with
 antibiotics or naturally harbouring
 different Wolbachia strains, after exposure to the
 fungal biocontrol agents Metarhizium
 brunneum and Beauveria bassiana. To control for
 potential effects of the bacterial community of spider mites, we also
 compared the susceptibility of two populations naturally uninfected
 by Wolbachia, treated with antibiotics or not. In one
 population, Wolbachia-infected mites had a better survival than
 uninfected ones in absence of fungi but not in their presence,
 whereas in the other population Wolbachia increased the
 mortality induced by B. bassiana. In one
 naturally Wolbachia-uninfected populations, the antibiotic
 treatment increased the susceptibility of spider mites to M.
 brunneum, but it had no effect in the other treatments. These
 results suggest that natural Wolbachia infections may
 not hamper and may even improve the success of biological control using
 entomopathogenic fungi. However, they also draw caution on the
 generalization of such effects, given the complexity of
 within-host pathogens interaction and the
 potential eco-evolutionary consequences of the use
 of biocontrol agents for Wolbachia-host associations.
description: Zélé et al. Full dataset Ecol Evol Complete dataset with the survival of females from 4 different populations (“population” column) of <i style="font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;white-space:normal;">Tetranychus urticae</i>treated or not with antibiotics (1 and 0, respectively, in the “antibiotic_treatment” column), and sprayed with <i style="font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;white-space:normal;">B. bassiana</i>, <i>M. brunneum</i>, or with Tween 20 only as control (BB, MB and C, respectively, in the “fungi_treatment” column). The “disc” column indicates the identity of the bean leaf disc on which each female was placed (20 females were placed together on each leaf disc; a total of 12 independent leaf discs, numbered from 1 to 12, were used per treatment and per population), and the column “block” indicates the temporal block. The “daydeath” column indicates the day of death of each female (i.e. the number of days after being sprayed), and the column “censor” indicates whether each female died accidentally (i.e. drowned in the wet cotton; 0) or ‘naturally’ (1).