Spiders do not escape reproductive manipulations by Wolbachia

Background  

Maternally inherited bacteria that reside obligatorily or facultatively in arthropods can increase their prevalence in the population by altering their hosts' reproduction. Such reproductive manipulations have been reported from the major arthropod groups such as insects (in particular hymenopterans, butterflies, dipterans and beetles), crustaceans (isopods) and mites. Despite the observation that endosymbiont bacteria are frequently encountered in spiders and that the sex ratio of particular spider species is strongly female biased, a direct relationship between bacterial infection and sex ratio variation has not yet been demonstrated for this arthropod order.