Apterygota in the spotlights of ecology, evolution and genomics.

Wingless basal hexapods, also known as Apterygota, are becoming more and more important as models to study general biological principles, a situation testified by papers presented at the VIIth Apterygota seminar held August 2006 at Texel, The Netherlands. In this short review we discern three areas of modern biology where Apterygota may obtain a position in the spotlight: (1) ecology: Apterygota communities can contribute to testing hypotheses about species traits, community composition and ecosystem function, (2) evolution: Apterygota are a crucial link in the deep phylogeny of the arthropods, (3) genomics: transcription profiling of apterygote model species can contribute to soil assessment and a better mechanistic understanding of how soil invertebrates may adapt to soil pollution. We describe these three areas and the exciting developments going on in each. © 2008 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved

Metallothionein mRNA expression and cadmium tolerance in metal-stressed and reference populations of the springtail Orchesella cincta.

Metal contamination in soil ecosystems is a permanent and often strong selection pressure. The present study investigates metal tolerance in 17 Orchesella cincta (Collembola) populations from metal-contaminated and reference sites, and combines analyses at the phenotypic and molecular level. Metal tolerance was phenotypically assayed by measuring survival times of laboratory cultures during exposure to cadmium. Comparisons of survival curves showed that five out of eight metal-stressed populations tested evolved increased cadmium tolerance (Stolberg, Plombieres, Hoboken, Hygum and Gusum). In addition, the role of the metallothionein (MT) gene in cadmium tolerance of O. cincta was studied by means of quantitative RT-PCR. The constitutive and Cd-induced MT mRNA expression of the laboratory cultures was measured. Results show that the mean constitutive MT mRNA expression of populations from polluted sites was significantly higher than of populations from reference sites. However, no correlation between MT mRNA expression levels after laboratory exposure to cadmium and field cadmium concentrations was observed. Furthermore, no relation between survival rate during exposure to cadmium and MT mRNA expression was detected. Our results suggest that constitutive MT mRNA expression plays a role in early protection against cadmium toxicity, and indicate that mechanisms other then MT up-regulation are involved in tolerance to prolonged exposure to cadmium. © 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc

Sugar sweet springtails: on the transcriptional response of Folsomia candida (Collembola) to desiccation stress.

Several species of Collembola survive stressful desiccating conditions by absorbing water vapour from the environment. To obtain insight into the transcriptomic responses underlying this 'water vapour absorption' mechanism we subjected Folsomia candida (Collembola) to transcriptome profiling. We show that ecologically relevant desiccation stress leads to strong time-dependent transcriptomic changes. Exposure of F. candida to 98.2% relative humidity over an interval of 174 h resulted in a high number of gene transcripts being differentially expressed (up to 41%; P-value < 0.05). Additional Gene Ontology analyses suggest that carbohydrate transport, sugar catabolism and cuticle maintenance are biological processes involved in combating desiccation. However, many additional pathways seem to be affected; additional experiments are needed to elucidate which responses are primarily linked to desiccation resistance. © 2009 The Royal Entomological Society

Evidence for multiple origins of Wolbachia infection in springtails.

Bacteria of the genus Wolbachia (Rickettsiae) are endosymbionts found in many species of invertebrates. The traditional division of Wolbachia lines into four supergroups has recently been challenged with the finding of a fifth supergroup. Until now, this E supergroup exists of a single host species of the order Collembola (springtails) and is hypothesized to form a 'missing link' between Wolbachia lines in higher arthropods and nematodes. We have sequenced the 16S rDNA, the ftsZ and the wsp genes of a Wolbachia lineage present in the sexually reproducing collembolan Orchesella cincta. We tested the hypothesis on the origin of Wolbachia in Collembola by adding this new Wolbachia lineage and a lineage found in the collembolan Mesophorura macrochaeta to the Wolbachia phylogenetic tree. The addition of these two species clearly shows that Wolbachia is not monophyletic in Collembola. We conclude that the origin of Wolbachia in Collembola is a combination of vertical and horizontal transfer between coexisting species. © 2004 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved

Interplay of robustness and plasticity of life-history traits drives ecotypic differentiation in thermally distinct habitats

Phenotypic plasticity describes the ability of an individual to alter its phenotype in response to the environment and is potentially adaptive when dealing with environmental variation. However, robustness in the face of a changing environment may often be beneficial for traits that are tightly linked to fitness. We hypothesized that robustness of some traits may depend on specific patterns of plasticity within and among other traits. We used a reaction norm approach to study robustness and phenotypic plasticity of three life-history traits of the collembolan Orchesella cincta in environments with different thermal regimes. We measured adult mass, age at maturity and growth rate of males and females from heath and forest habitats at two temperatures (12 and 22 °C). We found evidence for ecotype-specific robustness of female adult mass to temperature, with a higher level of robustness in the heath ecotype. This robustness is facilitated by plastic adjustments of growth rate and age at maturity. Furthermore, female fecundity is strongly influenced by female adult mass, explaining the importance of realizing a high mass across temperatures for females. These findings indicate that different predicted outcomes of life-history theory can be combined within one species' ontogeny and that models describing life-history strategies should not assume that traits like growth rate are maximized under all conditions. On a methodological note, we report a systematic inflation of variation when standard deviations and correlation coefficients are calculated from family means as opposed to individual data within a family structure

Infectious parthenogenesis

Parthenogenesis-inducing Wolbachia bacteria are reproductive parasites that cause infected female wasps to produce daughters without mating. This manipulation of the host's reproduction enhances the transmission of Wolbachia to future generations because the bacteria are passed on vertically only from mothers to daughters. Males are dead ends for cytoplasmically inherited bacteria: they do not pass them on to their offspring. Vertical transmission of Wolbachia has been previously considered to be the main mode of transmission. Here we report frequent horizontal transmission from infected to uninfected wasp larvae sharing a common food source. The transferred Wolbachia are then vertically transmitted to the new host's offspring. This natural and unexpectedly frequent horizontal transfer of parthenogensis-inducing Wolbachia intraspecifically has important implications for the co-evolution of Wolbachia and their host

Genetic structure of soil invertebrate populations: Collembolans, earthworms and isopods.

Soil-living animals such as collembolans, earthworms and isopods are considered to be sedentary animals with only limited dispersal capacities. Therefore, gene flow among populations is expected to be low leading to significant population genetic differentiation due to random drift and local adaptation. We reviewed the literature to test this expectation. Our survey reveals a clear signature in the current pattern of genetic variation due to post-glacial colonization events. It also reveals that habitus can be a misleading predictor of dispersal capacity. In some species relatively high gene flow across considerable distances, most likely through passive dispersal (mediated by wind, water flow or animals), might counteract local genetic adaptation and will prevent loss of genetic variation. © 2013 Elsevier B.V