History
The genus was first identified in 1924 by Marshall Hertig and S. Burt Wolbach in Culex pipiens, a species of mosquito. Hertig formally described the species in 1936 as Wolbachia pipientis. Interest waned after the discovery until 1971, when Janice Yen and A. Ralph Barr of the UCLA discovered Culex mosquito eggs were killed by a cytoplasmic incompatibility when the sperm of Wolbachia-infected males fertilized infection-free eggs. In 1990, Richard Stouthamer of the University of California, Riverside discovered Wolbachia can make males dispensable in some species. It is today of considerable interest due to its ubiquitous distribution and many different evolutionary interactions.
Read more about this topic: Wolbachia
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