bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.03.365353; this version posted November 3, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 1 Intraspecific variation in symbiont density in an insect-microbe symbiosis 2 3 Benjamin J. Parker,1,2,3* Jan Hrček,1,4 Ailsa H.C. McLean,1 Jennifer A. Brisson,3 & H. 4 Charles J. Godfray 1 5 6 1 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX13PS, UK 7 8 2 Department of Microbiology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA 9 10 3 Department of Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA 11 12 4 Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of 13 Sciences, Branisovska 31, Ceske Budejovice 37005, Czech Republic 14 15 16 17 ORCIDs: BJP: 0000-0002-0679-4732; JH: 0000-0003-0711-6447; AHCM: 0000-0002-8195- 18 2593; JAB: 0000-0001-7000-0709; HCJG: 0000-0001-8859-7232 19 20 * Author for correspondence:
[email protected], phone: +1 865 974 9818 21 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.03.365353; this version posted November 3, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 22 ABSTRACT 23 24 Many insects host vertically-transmitted microbes, which can confer benefits to their hosts but 25 are costly to maintain and regulate. A key feature of these symbioses is variation: for example, 26 symbiont density can vary among host and symbiont genotypes.