Bacterial symbionts in insects: balancing life and death

Arthropods, particularly insects, form successful long-term symbioses with endosymbiotic bacteria. The associations between insects and endosymbionts are remarkably stable; many stretch back several hundred million years in evolutionary time. With the exception, perhaps, of the filarial nematodes no other group of metazoans shows such a proclivility for their intracellular symbionts. The identification and classification of bacterial symbionts and hosts has grown rapidly over the last two decades and these relationships form a continuum from classical mutualism to parasitism. Complete genomes have been sequenced for many of these bacteria and some of their hosts. Now more intractable questions regarding endosymbiosis are being addressed. Investigations on the role of the host immune system in the maintenance of symbiosis, the nature of bacteriophages and transposable elements found in the genomes of many bacterial symbionts, and the molecular mechanisms involved in establishing reproductive phenotypes such as parthenogenesis, male killing, cytoplasmic incompatibility and feminization have been recently reported. This review will focus on the impact of the secondary endosymbionts Wolbachia, Cardinium, and Spiroplasma on host fitness and immunity and will revisit the question of whether these bacteria are friend or foe from an insect’s point of view.