Genetic Diversity of Endosymbiotic Bacteria Infecting Two Mosquito Species of the Genus Occurring in Sympatry in the Comoros Archipelago

Overview

Journal Front Microbiol

Specialty Microbiology

Date 2024 Apr 11

PMID 38601925

Authors

Yann Gomard

Sarah Hafsia

Cyrille Lebon

Patrick Rabarison

Ambdoul-Bar Idaroussi

Amina Yssouf

Philippe Bousses

Patrick Mavingui

Celestine Atyame

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Introduction: The influence of on mosquito reproduction and vector competence has led to renewed interest in studying the genetic diversity of these bacteria and the phenotypes they induced in mosquito vectors. In this study, we focused on two species of , namely and , from three islands in the Comoros archipelago (in the Southwestern Indian Ocean).

Methods: Using the gene, we examined the mitochondrial genetic diversity of 879 individuals from 54 sites. Additionally, we investigated the presence and genetic diversity of using the marker and the diversity of five housekeeping genes commonly used for genotyping through Multiple Locus Sequence Typing (MLST).

Results And Discussion: Overall, was the most abundant species in the three surveyed islands and both mosquito species occurred in sympatry in most of the investigated sites. We detected a higher mitochondrial genetic diversity in with 35 reported haplotypes ( = 615 specimens, = 0.481 and π = 0.002) while 13 haplotypes were found in ( = 205 specimens, = 0.338 and π = 0.001), this difference is likely due to the bias in sampling size between the two species. We report for the first time the presence of in these two species. The prevalence of infection varied significantly between species, with a low prevalence recorded in (0.8%, = 5/627) while infection was close to fixation in (87.7%, = 221/252). Both male and female individuals of the two mosquito species appeared to be infected. The analysis of MLST genes revealed the presence of two strains corresponding to two new strain types (STs) within the supergroups A and B, which have been named EretA and EretB. These strains were found as mono-infections and are closely related, phylogenetically, to strains previously reported in species. Finally, we demonstrate that maternal transmission of is imperfect in , which could explain the presence of a minority of uninfected individuals in the field.

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