Abstract
Varroa destructor infestation of Apis mellifera colonies carries and/or promotes replication of honey bee viruses like the Deformed wing virus, the Varroa destructor virus-1, the Acute bee paralysis virus, the Israeli acute bee paralysis virus and the Kashmir bee virus that have been well described and characterized; but viruses exclusively associated with Varroa were not found. To look for viruses that may associate with- or infect V. destructor we performed deep sequencing (RNA-seq) of RNA extracted from honey bees and mites in Varroa-infested untreated colonies. Comparative bioinformatic analysis of the two separate contig-assemblies generated from the sequences’ reads annotated using Blastx enabled identification of new viruses unique to Varroa and absent in A. mellifera: an Iflavirus and a virus with homology to Ixodes scapularis associated virus 2, that we named Varroa destructor virus 2 (VDV-2) and 3(VDV-3), respectively. We validated these findings sequencing the mite- and honey bee-viromes and in separate mites and honey bees randomly sampled. The complete genomes of VDV-2 and VDV-3 bear 9576 nucleotides and 4202 nucleotides, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis of VDV-3 suggests that it belongs to a new group of viruses. Our results open venues for investigating the pathogenicity of these V. destructor viruses.
Highlights
The ectoparasite Varroa destructor spread throughout the world, from the Asian honey bee Apis ceranae to the European honey bee Apis mellifera, since the middle of the last century[1]
The honey bee viruses vectored by V. destructor seem not to cause pathogenic symptoms to the mite, including a virus discovered in the mite, the Varroa destructor virus-1 (VDV-1) that is highly homologous to DWV20
A. mellifera infested with V. destructor we extracted RNA from honey bees and Varroa pooled from four colonies
Summary
The ectoparasite Varroa destructor spread throughout the world, from the Asian honey bee Apis ceranae to the European honey bee Apis mellifera, since the middle of the last century[1]. Because Varroa infestations and virus infections (mainly DWV) became major drivers of collapse of honey bee colonies[1,5,16,17,18,19] they threaten food security. It is known very little about viruses infectious to V. destructor. Our data revealed novel viruses present in V. destructor and absent in A. mellifera The discovery these new viruses paves the way for studying their pathogenicity to Varroa and exploring their suitability as means to control this pest
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