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Novel chlamydiae in whiteflies and scale insects: endosymbionts ‘Candidatus Fritschea bemisiae’ strain Falk and ‘Candidatus Fritschea eriococci’ strain Elm

¹ Department of Biology, Box 355325, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-5325, USA
² Microbiology Section, University of California, Davis, CA 95616-8665, USA
³ Division of Microbial Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Conservation Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
⁴ University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA

Correspondence
Karin D. E. Everett
kdeeverett{at}hotmail.com or
kdee2004{at}u.washington.edu or
keverett{at}uga.edu

Bacteria called ‘Fritschea’ are endosymbionts of the plant-feeding whitefly Bemisia tabaci and scale insect Eriococcus spurius. In the gut of B. tabaci, these bacteria live within bacteriocyte cells that are transmitted directly from the parent to oocytes. Whiteflies cause serious economic damage to many agricultural crops; B. tabaci fecundity and host range are less than those of Bemisia argentifolii, possibly due to the presence of this endosymbiont. The B. tabaci endosymbiont has been characterized using electron microscopy and DNA analysis but has not been isolated or propagated outside of insects. The present study compared sequences for 11 endosymbiont genes to genomic data for chlamydial families Parachlamydiaceae, Chlamydiaceae and Simkaniaceae and to 16S rRNA gene signature sequences from 330 chlamydiae. We concluded that it was appropriate to propose ‘Candidatus Fritschea bemisiae’ strain Falk and ‘Candidatus Fritschea eriococci’ strain Elm as members of the family Simkaniaceae in the Chlamydiales.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for genomic fragments containing the rRNA operons of ‘Candidatus F. bemisiae’ Falk and ‘Candidatus F. eriococci’ Elm are respectively AY140910 and AY140911.

An extended neighbour-joining tree is available as supplementary material in IJSEM Online.

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