Selfish genes in mosquitos

Hurst and colleagues state that “within any population of [the mosquito] Culex pipiens there are two sorts of individual, those that bear/harbour Wolbachia [bacteria] and those that do not”. But, according to Yen and Barr3, all wild-type C. pipiens appropriately examined before 1973 were found to carry Wolbachia, It was only when Yen and Barr produced uninfected individuals artificially by tetracycline treatment that it was found that matings of uninfected females x infected males were sterile, whereas all matings by uninfected males were fertile.