Stable Establishment of Cardinium in the Brown Planthopper Nilaparvata lugens despite Decreased Host Fitness

The brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens (Hemiptera), is a major pest of rice crops in Asia. Artificial transinfections of Wolbachia have recently been used for reducing host impacts, but transinfections have not yet been undertaken with another important endosymbiont, Cardinium. This endosymbiont can manipulate the reproduction of hosts through phenotypes such as cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), which is strong in the related white-backed planthopper, Sogatella furcifera (Hemiptera). Here, we stably infected N. lugens with Cardinium from S. furcifera and showed that it exhibits perfect maternal transmission in N. lugens. The density of Cardinium varied across developmental stages and tissues of its transinfected host. Cardinium did not induce strong CI in N. lugens, likely due to its low density in testicles. The infection did decrease fecundity and hatching rate in the transinfected host, but a decrease in fecundity was not apparent when transinfected females mated with Wolbachia infected males. The experiments show the feasibility of transferring Cardinium endosymbionts across hosts, but the deleterious effects of Cardinium on N. lugens limit its potential to spread in wild populations of N. lugens in the absence of strong CI. IMPORTANCE In this study, we established a Cardinium-infected N. lugens line that possessed complete maternal transmission. Cardinium had a widespread distribution in tissues of N. lugens, and this infection can decrease the fecundity and hatching rate of the host. Our findings emphasize the feasibility of transinfection of Cardinium in insects, and this expands the range of endosymbionts that could be manipulated for pest control.