Isolation of a novel orthobunyavirus from bat flies (Eucampsipoda africana).

Petrus Jansen Van Vuren,Gustavo Palacios,Nadia Storm,Wanda Markotter,Michael R Wiley,Alan Kemp,Monica Birkhead,Janusz T Paweska

doi:10.1099/jgv.0.000753

Abstract

The Bunyaviridae family comprises viruses causing diseases of public and veterinary health importance, including viral haemorrhagic and arboviral fevers. We report the isolation, identification and genome characterization of a novel orthobunyavirus, named Wolkberg virus (WBV), from wingless bat fly ectoparasites (Eucampsipoda africana) of Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) in South Africa. Complete genome sequence data of WBV suggests it is most closely related to two bat viruses (Mojuí dos Campos and Kaeng Khoi viruses) and an arbovirus (Nyando virus) previously shown to infect humans. WBV replicates to high titres in VeroE6 and C6-36 cells, characteristic of mosquito-borne arboviruses. These findings expand our knowledge of the diversity of orthobunyaviruses and their insect vector host range.

Highlights

The Bunyaviridae family contains over 530 members and has an extensive host range, including arthropods, rodents, large mammals and plants
We describe the discovery of the first orthobunyavirus to be isolated from bat ectoparasites (Eucampsipoda africana), which were collected from wild-caught Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) in South Africa
The ectoparasites from which the viruses were isolated were morphologically identified as nycteribiid bat flies, Eucampsipoda africana Theodor (Diptera: Nycteribiidae) [19, 20]

Summary

Introduction

The Bunyaviridae family contains over 530 members and has an extensive host range, including arthropods, rodents, large mammals and plants. The typical bunyavirus genome comprises single-stranded RNA separated into small (S), medium (M) and large (L) segments with complementary terminal sequences unique to specific viral genera. The orthobunyavirus genus comprises more than 170 known viruses assembled into 48 species and 19 serogroups [2]. Viruses in the genus, such as La Crosse, Ngari, Oropouche and Nyando viruses, are known to cause disease in humans, ranging from mild febrile illness to more severe complications including encephalitis, haemorrhagic fever and death [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Some serological evidence suggests that KKV might be of public health importance [18]

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