Genetic analysis of two distinct reproductive strategies in sexual and thelytokous field populations of an endoparastic wasp.

无性（thelytokous）女性的昆虫寄生蜂，黑星菌，其中发展的另一种昆虫，表现出进化稳定的混合物的生活史策略，允许两个遗传上不同的黄蜂线共域共存于同一个主机资源。这两个thelytokous线不同的病毒样颗粒蛋白编码基因（VLP1），这提出了一个问题，是否VLP1基因位点是遗传相关的表型。 我们将调查观察到的表型差异的遗传基础，通过比较两个thelytokous线与相应的纯合VLP1基因型的有性株。这一结果将为检验某些昆虫物种的孤雌生殖策略提供分子和遗传框架。

Asexual (thelytokous) females of an insect parasitoid, Venturia canescens, which develop inside another insect, exhibit evolutionarily stable mixtures of life-history strategies, allowing two genetically distinct wasp lines to coexist sympatrically on the same host resources. The two thelytokous lines differ in a virus-like particle protein-coding gene (VLP1), which raises the question whether the VLP1 gene locus is genetically associated with the phenotype. We will investigate the genetic basis for the observed phenotypic differences, by comparing the two thelytokous lines with the corresponding homozygous VLP1-genotypes in sexual strains. The outcome will provide a molecular and genetic framework to test parthenogenetic reproduction strategies in some insect species.