Male-killing virus leads to more female moths
Male-killing virus leads to more female moths
Tags: Arbovirus, Moths, Selfish genetic elements, Sex distorterAnonymous, Nature, 2023.
Keisuke Nagamine at Minami Kyushu University in Miyazaki, Japan, and his colleagues have identified another virus that kills male embryos of the tobacco caterpillar, Spodoptera litura. Female moths infected with the virus produced an equal number of male and female embryos, but almost no male embryos survived. The virus doesn’t share male-killing genes with other known male-killing viruses or bacteria, suggesting that these mechanisms evolved independently.
