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> The virus changes the sex ratio of offspring of the wasp and lengthens its life span:
> 
> https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/gender-bending-virus-grants-insect-killing-wasps-longer-life?utm_source=Today+in+Cosmos+Magazine&utm_campaign=fd8c143d98-RSS_EMAIL&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5f4ec2b124-fd8c143d98-180078025
> 
> "The virus infects a chalcid wasp called Pteromalus puparum, a parasitoid. This means it lays its eggs in other living insects. Butterfly caterpillars are a particular favourite. 
> 
> "A team led by Gongyin Ye from Zhejiang University in China discovered the virus when trawling through the wasp’s transcriptome – a read-out of the wasp’s active genes. The team noted that one of the read-outs didn’t belong to the wasp, but to a virus.
>  
> "Wasps and viruses often form symbiotic alliances against their insect hosts. For example, some wasps need particular viruses in order to produce the pathogens necessary to defeat host-insect immune systems and thus boost survival chances for implanted eggs. 
> 
> "Ye’s team recognised the previously unknown virus as a member of the family Nyamiviridae. They dubbed it Pteromalus puparum negative-strand RNA virus 1, or PpNSRV-1 for short.
>  
> "The researchers wanted to find out whether it confers any advantages on the wasp – and it turns out that it does, at least in the laboratory.
> 
> "Wasps infected with the virus lived about a third longer than uninfected ones. It’s not yet known whether this effect will hold for wasps in the wild – where the team found infection rates running between 17% and 38% – but if it does, it could suggest a nifty evolutionary strategy on the part of both partners: the longer the wasp lives, the greater its opportunity to spread the virus. 
> 
> "But that’s not all the virus does. It also skews the sex ratio of the wasps, reducing by around half the number of females that hatch.
>  
> “'It’s quite unusual,” says entomologist Ary Hoffmann from the University of Melbourne, who was not involved in the study. Whereas there are several examples of insect-infecting bacteria that kill males, he says, “here we have an example of a virus that seems to be doing the opposite”. 
> 
> "Teasing out the virus’s effects in wild wasp populations and butterfly hosts will require further work. 
> 
> "According to Hoffman, the study highlights the staggering diversity of insect infections, both viral and bacterial, that are only now coming to light thanks to advances in molecular sequencing techniques. 
> 
> “'There is this amazing biodiversity of [insect] viruses out there and we really don't know much about them,” he says." 
> 
> Comment: Looks like an accidental relationship with no important purposeful results. We must await more research.