Arsenophonus Triatominarum

''Arsenophonus'' is a genus of Morganellaceae, of the Gammaproteobacteria. Members of the ''Arsenophonus'' genus are increasingly discovered bacterial symbionts of arthropods that are estimated to infect over 5% of arthropod species globally and form a variety of relationships with hosts across the mutualism parasitism continuum. ''Arsenophonus'' bacteria have been identified in a diversity of insect taxa, including economically important species such as the Western honey bee and the rice pest ''Nilaparvata lugens''.

The majority of work on ''Arsenophonus'' has been done on the type species ''Arsenophonus nasoniae'' for which genetic manipulation has been successful in achieving ''in vivo'' tracking of the bacterium. ''Arsenophonus nasoniae'' infects ''Nasonia'' parasitic wasps, is vertically transmitted through eggs, and has a male-killing phenotype. Infection with ''Arsenophonus nasoniae'' triggers the death of approximately 80% of the wasps male offspring. Killing male offspring is thought to facilitate the spread of ''Arsenophonus'' through the host population as it releases more resources to female offspring, and it is the female line that ''Arsenophonus'' is transmitted through.

Within the genus a number of ''Arsenophonus'' strains have known roles as mutualistic endosymbionts. In both ''Pediculus humanus'' and ''Lipoptena cervi'' ''Arsenophonus'' symbionts are essential to host functioning and are involved in vitamin synthesis, and are vertically transmitted across host generations. In other hosts ''Arsenophonus'' is suspected to be parasitic. In the Western honey bee ''Arsenophonus'' can be horizontally transmitted via social behaviour, and the presence of ''Arsenophonus'' in a colony has been linked to poor bee health. The majority of associations between ''Arsenophonus'' and host taxa remain uncharacterized.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Arsenophonus
Monotypic bacteria genera
Bacteria genera