Abstract
BackgroundThe Cimicidae are obligatory blood-feeding ectoparasites of medical and veterinary importance. We aim in the current study to assess the ability of MALDI-TOF MS to identify Cimex hirundinis swallow bugs collected in house martin nests.MethodsSwallow bugs were picked out from abandoned nests of house martin swallows and identified morphologically to the species level. The bugs were randomly selected, dissected and then subjected to MALDI-TOF MS and molecular analyses.ResultsA total of 65 adults and 50 nymphs were used in the attempt to determine whether this tool could identify the bug species and discriminate their developmental stages. Five adults and four nymphs of C. hirundinis specimens were molecularly identified to update our MS homemade arthropod database. BLAST analysis of COI gene sequences from these C. hirundinis revealed 98.66–99.12% identity with the corresponding sequences of C. hirundinis of the GenBank. The blind test against the database supplemented with MS reference spectra showed 100% (57/57) C. hirundinis adults and 100% (46/46) C. hirundinis nymphs were reliably identified and in agreement with morphological identification with logarithmic score values between 1.922 and 2.665. Ninety-nine percent of C. hirundinis specimens tested were positive for Wolbachia spp. The sequencing results revealed that they were identical to Wolbachia massiliensis, belonging to the new T-supergroup strain and previously isolated from C. hemipterus.ConclusionsWe report for the first time to our knowledge a case of human infestation by swallow bugs (C. hirundinis) in France. We also show the usefulness of MALDI-TOF MS in the rapid identification of C. hirundinis specimens and nymphs with minimal sample requirements. We phylogenetically characterized the novel Wolbachia strain (W. massiliensis) infecting C. hirundinis and compared it to other recognized Wolbachia clades.Graphical
Highlights
The Cimicidae are obligatory blood-feeding ectoparasites of medical and veterinary importance
Three common species are involved in swallow bug infestation: the North American swallow bug C. vicarius, which is an ectoparasite of the cliff swallow, rarely reported in the barn swallow and house sparrow [13,14,15,16]; Cimex hirundinis, which is found in Eurasia, exclusively common to house martin nests and other birds; Cimex montandoni, which is found in Romania in sand martin nests [7, 17]
In the present work, we showed the usefulness of MALDI-TOF MS as a complementary and alternative tool to rapidly identify swallow bug species (C. hirundinis) stored at − 20 °C, without requiring any entomological expertise
Summary
The Cimicidae are obligatory blood-feeding ectoparasites of medical and veterinary importance. The “true bugs” refer to the order Hemiptera, with > 42,000 species in 90 families worldwide [1, 2] This order comprises insects, including predatory entomophagous insects that feed on insects and small invertebrates, phytophagous insects and three families that are strictly hematophagous [3]. The Cimicidae family includes around 100 species grouped into 24 genera [4]. This family can be differentiated from other Hemiptera by being flat in shape, ovoid, flightless and wingless [3, 5]. In Europe, the Cimicinae subfamily is the only one prevalent It is represented by the genus Cimex, which includes seven species [6, 7]. The strain responsible for Venezuelan equine encephalitis (Tonate virus), has been isolated in C. vicarius [20]
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