Abstract
The genus Vibrio consists of more than 100 species grouped in 14 clades that are widely distributed in aquatic environments such as estuarine, coastal waters, and sediments. A large number of species of this genus are associated with marine organisms like fish, molluscs and crustaceans, in commensal or pathogenic relations. In the last decade, more than 50 new species have been described in the genus Vibrio, due to the introduction of new molecular techniques in bacterial taxonomy, such as multilocus sequence analysis or fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism. On the other hand, the increasing number of environmental studies has contributed to improve the knowledge about the family Vibrionaceae and its phylogeny. Vibrio crassostreae, V. breoganii, V. celticus are some of the new Vibrio species described as forming part of the molluscan microbiota. Some of them have been associated with mortalities of different molluscan species, seriously affecting their culture and causing high losses in hatcheries as well as in natural beds. For other species, ecological importance has been demonstrated being highly abundant in different marine habitats and geographical regions. The present work provides an updated overview of the recently characterized Vibrio species isolated from molluscs. In addition, their pathogenic potential and/or environmental importance is discussed.
Highlights
Coastal and estuaries environments are growing areas of bivalve molluscs which become an important industry in many countries, due to the increasing importance of these animal as protein for human consumption
Regarding the vibrios described as associated with bivalve molluscs, and beside the well known species V. alginolyticus, V. harveyi, V. mytili, V. parahaemolyticus, V. pectenicida, or V. vulnificus (Pujalte et al, 1993; Lambert et al, 1998; Arias et al, 1999; Pujalte et al, 1999; Maugeri et al, 2000; Caballo and Stabili, 2002;Paillard et al, 2004; Beaz-Hidalgo et al, 2010a; Romalde et al, 2013), since the turn of the century 19 new species and 2 new subspecies have been described within the genus Vibrio (Figure 1)
The presence of a lethal extracellular 39-kDa protease, similar to that of Vibrio pelagius, was detected in 15% of the extracellular products (ECP) assayed belonging to strains of the Vibrio splendidus–V. lentus related group by Farto et al (2006), which suggested their potential risk for the health of reared aquatic organisms
Summary
Coastal and estuaries environments are growing areas of bivalve molluscs which become an important industry in many countries, due to the increasing importance of these animal as protein for human consumption Due to their filter-feeding habit, bivalves accumulate a rich and diverse bacterial microbiota, composed of various species belonging to different genera like Vibrio, Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, Photobacterium, Moraxella, Aeromonas, Micrococcus, and Bacillus (Murchelano and Brown, 1970; Kueh and Chan, 1985; Prieur et al, 1990). Vibrios are Gram-negative curved rods that occur naturally in marine, estuarine, and freshwater systems worldwide They occupy habitats ranging from the deep sea to shallow aquatic environments (Reen et al, 2006), being some species important for natural systems, including the carbon cycle and osmorregulation (Johnson, 2013), as free-living inhabitants in the water column or associated to particulate material. Vibrios are associated with a wide variety of poikilotherm and homoiotherm animals, including humans, for some of which are pathogens. Paillard et al (2004) recognized that the emergence of vibrios as etiological agents of diseases is likely to increase over the coming years due to ocean warming
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