# Spatially Varying Wolbachia Frequencies Reveal the Invasion Origin of an Agricultural Pest Recently Introduced From Europe to North America

## TL;DR

Scientists used Wolbachia bacteria to trace the origin of an invasive cherry fruit fly in North America back to uninfected populations in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.

## Contribution

This study introduces a novel use of Wolbachia infection frequency patterns to infer invasion origins of non-native species.

## Key findings

- Introduced North American populations of Rhagoletis cerasi lack the wCer2 Wolbachia strain and associated mitochondrial haplotype.
- Wolbachia spatial interpolation suggests invasion origin from wCer2-uninfected populations in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.
- The study demonstrates how Wolbachia can be used as a tool to trace biological invasions.

## Abstract

The introduction of non‐native species across the world represents a major global challenge. Retracing invasion origin is an important first step in understanding the invasion process, often requiring detailed sampling within the native range. Insect species frequently host Wolbachia, a widespread endosymbiotic bacterium that manipulates host reproduction to increase infected female fitness. Here, we draw on the spatial variation in infection frequencies of an actively spreading Wolbachia strain wCer2 to investigate the invasion origin of the European cherry fruit fly, Rhagoletis cerasi. This pest of cherries was introduced from Europe to North America within the last decade. First, we screen the introduced fly population for the presence of Wolbachia. The introduced populations lack the wCer2 strain and the strongly associated mitochondrial haplotype, suggesting strain absence due to founder effects with invading individuals originating from wCer2‐uninfected native population(s). To narrow down geographic regions of invasion origin, we perform spatial interpolation of the wCer2 infection frequency across the native range and predict the infection frequency in unsampled regions. For this, we use an extensive dataset of R. cerasi infection covering 238 populations across Europe over 25 years, complemented with 14 additional populations analyzed for this study. We find that R. cerasi was unlikely introduced from wCer2‐infected populations in Central and Western Europe. We propose wCer2‐uninfected populations from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean region as the most likely candidates for the invasion origin. This work utilizes Wolbachia as an indirect instrument to provide insights into the invasion source of R. cerasi in North America, revealing yet another application for this multifaceted heritable endosymbiont. Given the prevalence of biological invasions, rapidly uncovering invasion origins gives fundamental insights into how invasive species adapt to new environments.