New records of insect-virus diseases

Abstract

does not appear. First page follows. Since Reporting (Steinhaus, 1951)3 on the diagnosis of specimens of diseased insects received by this laboratory between 1944 and 1950, we have processed a large number of accessions of insects suffering from bacterial, fungus, and protozoan diseases. Among the more interesting accessions were those in which the insects were infected with viruses. Some of the latter constitute new records in that the particular type of virus disease concerned had not heretofore been reported in that particular insect species. Although there was no opportunity to prove the identity and distinctiveness of the viruses by cross-infectivity tests, it is presumed that most of the viruses in these newly recorded hosts are also new. In addition to reporting these new records, it is the purpose of the present paper to recount seven new instances in which a single insect species is subject to infection by two types of virus; in one case both types occurred simultaneously in the same specimen. The number of insect species known to be susceptible to both a nuclear polyhedrosis virus and a granulosis virus is not great. Nevertheless, a perusal of the literature shows as many as seven insect species recorded, at different times, as being attacked by a nuclear polyhedrosis and a granulosis virus. It is to be hoped that eventually a comparative morphological, developmental, and biochemical study will be made of the two types of virus as they occur in a single host species. Hosts of Both Polyhedrosis and Granulosis Viruses The first insect4 to be reported as a host to both types of virus was the cutworm