Endosymbiont Microorganisms in Rusty Grain Beetle Cryptolestes ferrugineus (L.) Populations

Abstract

Bacterias are the most important members of insect microbial flora. These microorganisms create important food for insects, contribute to nutrient digestion, synthesize useful vitamins and enzymes, bind nitrogen, provide resistance to insecticides, produce pheromones and contribute to insect life in order to compete with insect pathogens; also there are pathogenic bacteria which kill, pacify and control them. More effective, new and environmentally-conscious methods are required to control the pests. First of all, after determining the endosymbiont bacteria composition of pest insects in our country, new control strategies can be made possible to do experiments by considering the characteristics of these bacteria species. Therefore, 10 populations of C. ferrugineus were collected from cereal storages in Adana, Konya, Izmir, Samsun, and Istanbul provinces in order to investigate the presence of secondary endosymbionts in Cryptolestes ferrugineus. Presence of Wolbachia, Rickettsia and Spiroplasma as endosymbiont microorganisms have been determined by applying synthetic primers and PCR method for the first time in our country. Totally, there were 10 populations and three of them have Wolbachia, six of them have Rickettsia and one of them has Spiroplasma. Seven of the total population in Turkey (%70) were found to be infected with at least one endosymbiont. This study is also the first study in the world that show that C. ferrugineus is infected with endosymbionts Wolbachia, Rickettsia and Spiroplasma.