Infection divides two wasp species
By Susan Milius
Giving antibiotics to tiny wasps to cure them of a sex-related disease reveals the best evidence yet that infections can help make new species, say researchers in New York.
Each of two closely related species of wasps in the genus Nasonia carries two separate strains of Wolbachia bacteria, notorious saboteurs of insect reproduction, report Seth Brodenstein and his colleagues at the University of Rochester. The wasps live in separate parts of the United States, laying eggs in pupae of flies. But when wasps of the two species meet in the lab, they don’t hybridize well. However, cure them of their Wolbachia infections, and the wasps turn out hybrids as viable and fertile as same-species crosses do.