Highlights•Endosymbionts are constrained in inducing parthenogenesis by the high
variability of sex determination mechanisms.•Endosymbionts need a specialized and host …

Ants are among the most successful organisms on Earth. It has been suggested that forming
symbioses with nutrient-supplementing microbes may have contributed to their success, by …

Wolbachia is one of the most common intracellular symbionts among insects, but the
function of this infection and its effects on the host still remain largely unknown for many …

The endosymbiotic Wolbachia is one of the most common intracellular bacteria known in
arthropods and nematodes. Its ability for reproductive manipulation can cause unequal …

Introduced populations of invasive organisms have to cope with novel environmental
challenges, while having reduced genetic variation caused by founder effects. The …

Social insect queens and workers can engage in conflict over reproductive allocation when
they have different fitness optima. Here, we show that queens have control over queen …

While Wolbachia are commonly found among arthropods, intraspecific infection rates can
vary substantially across the geographic populations. Here we report nearly 100 …

Introduction The genus Wolbachia provides a typical example of intracellular bacteria that
infect the germline of arthropods and filarial nematodes worldwide. Their importance as …

Juvenile hormone is considered to be a master regulator of polyphenism in social insects. In
the ant Cardiocondyla obscurior, whether a female egg develops into a queen or a worker is …

1. Bacterial endosymbionts play a fundamental role in insect ecology. Ants host a large
diversity of bacterial symbionts, but comparably little is known about how the loss or …