Rescuing Wolbachia have been overlooked ...

Wolbachia, intracellular bacteria transmitted through the egg, have been estimated to infect more than 16% of all insect species, as well as other arthropods1. They distort their hosts' reproduction, inducing parthenogenesis, feminization and cytoplasmic incompatibility2. This favours the reproduction of infected female hosts at the expense of uninfected females. Here we show that several Wolbachia strains that cannot generate modifications in host sperm can still rescue the modifications caused by other strains as long as the two strains are sufficiently closely related.