First molecular characterization of the facultative myiasis agent Eristalis tenax in Turkey using mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I DNA barcoding sequences

Mübeccel Okur,Abdullah İnci̇,Alparslan Yildirim

doi:10.3906/vet-1911-82

Abstract

This report is the first molecular characterization of the facultative myiasis agent Eristalis tenax collected from cattle barns in Kayseri province of Central Anatolia, Turkey. A total of 10 adult fly specimens were included in the study. All flies were identified as female adults of E. tenax by morphologic characteristics under a stereomicroscope. The barcode region of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1) gene was amplified with PCR from the genomic DNA extracts of E. tenax specimens for molecular identification and phylogenetic analyses. There was no polymorphism among the CO1 sequences of all isolates leading to the detection of a single haplotype for E. tenax. Haplotype and nucleotide diversities in the CO1 data set comprised of the sequence of the detected haplotype and the published sequences of E. tenax from different countries in GenBank were determined as 0.775 and 0.002, respectively. The newly characterized haplotype in this study clustered with the haplotypes from Australia and Canada in a monophyletic clade and exhibited a 100.0% identity to the Australian E. tenax isolate (JN991985). Interspecific genetic differences between E. tenax and other Eristalis species were in the range of 5.7% to 7.9%.

Highlights

The flies in the family Syrphidae (Diptera: Lower Cyclorrhapha), one of the most speciose of dipteran families, are known as flower flies or hoverflies, and this family includes more than 5000 described species [1]
The objective of this study was to provide the first outputs on the molecular characterization of E. tenax distributed in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey and to reveal the genetic diversity of the lineages by comparing
Morphologic identification The collected flies that were close to both honey and bumble bees in appearance were identified as the females of E. tenax according to the described keys (Figure 1)

Summary

Introduction

The flies in the family Syrphidae (Diptera: Lower Cyclorrhapha), one of the most speciose of dipteran families, are known as flower flies or hoverflies, and this family includes more than 5000 described species [1]. Eristalis tenax Linnaeus, 1758 in the family Syrphidae, is known as a drone fly and may offer potential as a managed pollinator of field crops This fly has a worldwide distribution including Europe [2], China [3], Japan [4], the Indian subcontinent, and throughout the New World [5,6,7]. The larvae of E. tenax, known as rat-tailed maggots, are aquatic and mainly found in wetlands contaminated with livestock manure and wastewater processing facilities [11,12,13] Despite their important role in pollination for many flowering plants, E. tenax have medical and veterinary importance due to the vector potential of adults, immature stages for mycobacteria [14,15], and causing facultative myiasis by early-stage maggots in humans and livestock [16,17,18,19,20,21]. Dik et al [27] described a case of traumatic myiasis in a dog from the Central Anatolia Region

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