Bug uses germ warfare

Whitefly...eugh! Invasive whitefly carries a virus to make its conquest easier

In just twenty years a strain of whitefly Bemisia tabaci — known as “biotype B” — has all but taken over the world. The waves of tiny bugs, which feed on the phloem of their host plants, were transported across the globe by the international flower trade (“spread it with flowers”?). How they have managed to bump out the local strain has until now remained a mystery, but according to the authors of a study published this week, the key to success lies in a neat evolutionary arrangement with a group of viruses. A team led by Shu-Sheng Liu at Zhejiang University, China, found that tobacco curly shoot virus and tomato yellow leaf curl China virus, which have devastated their respective crops in the wake of the whitefly invasion, also allow the biotype B strain to live much longer and produce more eggs. Such a terrible partnership is certainly one way to cut down global cigarette consumption, but what harm have tomatoes ever done?

Source: Jiu, M, Zhou, X-P, Tong, L, Xu, J, Yang, X, Wan, F-H & Liu, S-S (2007) Vector-virus mutualism accelerates population increase in an invasive whitefly. PLoS ONE DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000182