The bacterium Wolbachia manipulates reproduction in millions of insects worldwide; the most common effect is cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). We found that CI resulted from delayed nuclear envelope breakdown of the male pronucleus in Nasonia vitripennis. This caused asynchrony between the male and female pronuclei and, ultimately, loss of paternal chromosomes at the first mitosis. When Wolbach...

Using bioinformatics methods, we identified a total of 221 and 199 tRNA genes in the nuclear genomes of Nasonia vitripennis and honey bee (Apis mellifera), respectively. We performed comparative analyses of Nasonia tRNA genes with honey bee and other selected insects to understand genomic distribution, sequence evolution and relationship of tRNA copy number with codon usage patterns. Many tRNA ...

Most of our knowledge on learning and memory formation results from extensive studies on a small number of animal species. Although features and cellular pathways of learning and memory are highly similar in this diverse group of species, there are also subtle differences. Closely related species of parasitic wasps display substantial variation in memory dynamics and can be instrumental to unde...

Mating systems are shaped by a species' ecology, which sets the stage for sexual selection. Males of the gregarious parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis compete to mate virgin females at the natal site, before females disperse. Males could increase their fitness by being larger and monopolizing female emergence sites or by emerging earlier pre-empting access to females. We consider sexual select...

Many species adaptively alter offspring sex ratios, yet little is known about how they obtain relevant environmental information. New work on the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis reveals that the presence of eggs on hosts provides a reliable cue allowing females to determine the degree of local mate competition and adaptively adjust offspring sex ratios.

Wasps of the genus Nasonia are important biological control agents of house ßies and related Þlth ßies, which are major vectors of human pathogens. Species of Nasonia (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) are not easily differentiated from one another by morphological characters, and molecular markers for their reliable identiÞcation have been missing so far. Here, we report eight single-nucleotide polym...

The parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis is an emerging model organism for developmental and behavioral genetics. It reproduces by haplodiploidy; males typically develop parthenogenetically from haploid eggs and females from fertilized diploid eggs. A polyploid mutant strain is available in which females are triploid and lay haploid and diploid eggs that normally develop into males when unfertil...

One of the better-studied sex ratio theories is local mate competition (LMC) theory, first developed by Hamilton in 1967 (for reviews see Charnov, 1982; Waage, 1986; King, 1987). LMC models assume a subdivided population structure with emergence and then random mating taking place within local patches followed by female dispersal to new patches to lay offspring. Under these conditions, offsprin...