Fig. 6

IncQ plasmid transmission between honeybee-specific gut symbionts. a Experimental procedure for in vitro conjugation. IncQ plasmid pBTK519 (Kan^R) was used for transferability test between different donor and recipient strains. Donor strains of E. coli MFDpir and G. apis W8126 harboring the pBTK519 were co-incubated with strains from three honeybee gut bacterial genus, Gilliamella, Snodgrassella and Bartonella, as recipients. BHI agar supplemented with kanamycin and another designated antibiotics were used for transconjugants selection. b Experimental results of in vitro conjugation. The phylogenetic tree was constructed by maximum-likelihood method (RAxML) based on the whole genomes of isolated strains. The donor G. apis strain W8126 is shown in red