If there is ever a contest for Least Appreciated Creature on Earth, first prize should go to a microbe called Wolbachia.

The bacterium infects millions of invertebrate species, including spiders, shrimps and parasitic worms, as well as 60 percent of all insect species. Once in residence, Wolbachia co-opts its hosts’ reproductive machinery and often greedily shields them from a variety of competing infections.

Ever since the Zika outbreak began in Brazil last year, scientists have suspected that Wolbachia might protect mosquitoes from the virus. Now, researchers have confirmed this hunch, providing the first solid evidence that releasing Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes into the wild could help quell the epidemic.

“We are pretty sure that mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia will have a great impact on Zika transmission in the field,” said Luciano A. Moreira, a biologist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and the lead author of a new report on the researchers’ findings, published on Wednesday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.