Abstract
Objective: Mosquitoes are medically important arthropod vectors that harbor a variety of viruses. Geography and climate are known to be associated with variations in mosquito density, species and viromes. Our study investigated the dynamic changes in mosquito populations, species compositions and viromes in a regularly disinfected environment in Wuhan, China, during 2020. Methods: Traps were set in different mosquito habitats, including an urban residential area, two hospitals, a scenic area and a pig farm in a rural region between April and October of 2020. The collected mosquitoes were subjected to morphological identification, RT-qPCR and metagenomic sequencing. Results: A total of 2345 adult mosquitoes were collected. Culex mosquitoes were dominant in both urban regions (90.32%, 1538/1703) and the pig farm (54.98%, 353/642). In RT-qPCR screening, the prevalence of Banna virus was 15% and 3% in mosquitoes from the urban area and the pig farm, respectively, whereas no Japanese encephalitis virus was detected. Culex viromes showed dynamic changes during the collection period. Several mosquito-specific viruses, such as Culex flavivirus, Alphamesonivirus 1, Hubei mosquito virus 2 and Hubei mosquito virus 4, showed seasonal changes and unimodal increases or declines. Other mosquito-specific viruses, such as Wuhan mosquito virus 6, Hubei virga-like virus 2 and Zhejiang mosquito virus 3, were stable in all collected Culex and are potential members of the core viromes. Conclusion: This study improves understanding of the dynamic composition of mosquito species and the viromes that they carry, and provides useful information for guiding mosquito control and mosquito-borne disease prevention strategies.
Highlights
Mosquitoes are blood-sucking arthropods that have a broad distribution worldwide and can cause severe threats to public health
Mosquito composition The temperature and precipitation from April to October in Wuhan during 2020 (Fig 1A) were recorded.The rainfall increased above the 10-year average data in June and July, but the average temperature was lower than that in previous years [29]
From April to October, a total of 2345 adult mosquitoes were collected: 1703 from the urban area and 642 from the rural pig farm.The seasonal fluctuations in mosquito density in the urban area revealed a bimodal pattern, with the first peak occurring in May or June, and the second significantly lower peak occurring in September or October (Fig 1B and E), to previous data [30]
Summary
Mosquitoes are blood-sucking arthropods that have a broad distribution worldwide and can cause severe threats to public health. Mosquitoes are crucial competent vectors for several mosquito-borne viruses (MBVs), such as dengue virus and chikungunya virus, which infect millions of people every year [1,2]. In addition to MBVs that can infect both vertebrates and invertebrates, various mosquito-specific viruses (MSVs) have been identified in recent years.These MSVs have potential applications in biological control of mosquito-borne diseases, diagnostic therapies and novel vaccine platforms [4]. With rapidly developing next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology, viral metagenomics has been used to detect viral diversity and abundance, predict disease outbreaks and identify novel viruses in uncultured mosquito samples [7]. Viral metagenomic surveillance systems have been established to monitor the viromes derived from mosquito hosts [7]
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