Seasonal Changes in the Endosymbiotic Consortia of Aphids from the Genus <i>Cinara</i>

Buchnera aphidicola is the primary endosymbiont of aphids with which it maintains an obligate mutualistic symbiotic relationship. Insects also maintain facultative symbiotic relationships with secondary symbionts, and Serratia symbiotica is the most common in aphids. The presence of both symbionts in aphids of the subfamily Lachninae has been widely studied by our group. We examined two closely related aphids, Cinara tujafilina and C. cedri in the present study. Even though both B. aphidicola strains have similar genome sizes and gene contents, the genomes of the two S. symbiotica strains were markedly different. The SCc strain has the smallest genome known for this species, while SCt posse…