Lack of Evidence for Laboratory and Natural Vertical Transmission of Bluetongue Virus in Culicoides sonorensis (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae).

ABSTRACT: Culicoides sonorensis (Wirth & Jones) is the principal North American vector of bluetongue virus (BTV). BTV infection of livestock is distinctly seasonal (late summer and fall) in temperate regions of the world such as California, which has led to speculation regarding vertical transmission of the virus within the midge vector as a potential mechanism for interseasonal maintenance ("overwintering") of the virus. To evaluate potential vertical transmission of BTV in its midge vector, we fed adult midges BTV-spiked blood and used a BTV-specific quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assay to evaluate parent, egg, and progeny stages of laboratory-reared C. sonorensis for the presence of viral nucleic acid. Whereas BTV nucleic acid was weakly detected in egg batches of vi

SUBMITTER: Osborne CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4481717 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature