Dataset Information

Moku Virus in Invasive Asian Hornets, Belgium, 2016.

ABSTRACT: We report the detection of Moku virus in invasive Asian hornets (Vespa velutina nigrithorax) in Belgium. This constitutes an unexpected report of this iflavirus outside Hawaii, USA, where it was recently described in social wasps. Although virulence of Moku virus is unknown, its potential spread raises concern for European honeybee populations.

SUBMITTER: Garigliany M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5708231 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Moku Virus in Invasive Asian Hornets, Belgium, 2016.

Garigliany Mutien M Taminiau Bernard B El Agrebi Noëmie N Cadar Daniel D Gilliaux Gautier G Hue Marie M Desmecht Daniel D Daube Georges G Linden Annick A Farnir Frédéric F De Proft Michel M Saegerman Claude C

Emerging infectious diseases 20171201 12

We report the detection of Moku virus in invasive Asian hornets (Vespa velutina nigrithorax) in Belgium. This constitutes an unexpected report of this iflavirus outside Hawaii, USA, where it was recently described in social wasps. Although virulence of Moku virus is unknown, its potential spread raises concern for European honeybee populations. ...[more]

PMID: 29148384

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Project description:Invasive species present a worldwide concern as competition and pathogen reservoirs for native species. Specifically, the invasive social wasp, Vespula pensylvanica, is native to western North America and has become naturalized in Hawaii, where it exerts pressures on native arthropod communities as a competitor and predator. As invasive species may alter the microbial and disease ecology of their introduced ranges, there is a need to understand the microbiomes and virology of social wasps. We used 16S rRNA gene sequencing to characterize the microbiome of V. pensylvanica samples pooled by colony across two geographically distinct ranges and found that wasps generally associate with taxa within the bacterial genera Fructobacillus, Fructilactobacillus, Lactococcus, Leuconostoc, and Zymobacter, and likely associate with environmentally-acquired bacteria. Furthermore, V. pensylvanica harbors-and in some cases were dominated by-many endosymbionts including Wolbachia, Sodalis, Arsenophonus, and Rickettsia, and were found to contain bee-associated taxa, likely due to scavenging on or predation upon honey bees. Next, we used reverse-transcriptase quantitative PCR to assay colony-level infection intensity for Moku virus (family: Iflaviridae), a recently-described disease that is known to infect multiple Hymenopteran species. While Moku virus was prevalent and in high titer, it did not associate with microbial diversity, indicating that the microbiome may not directly interact with Moku virus in V. pensylvanica in meaningful ways. Collectively, our results suggest that the invasive social wasp V. pensylvanica associates with a simple microbiome, may be infected with putative endosymbionts, likely acquires bacterial taxa from the environment and diet, and is often infected with Moku virus. Our results suggest that V. pensylvanica, like other invasive social insects, has the potential to act as a reservoir for bacteria pathogenic to other pollinators, though this requires experimental demonstration.

Project description:Automated 3D image-based tracking systems are new and promising devices to investigate the foraging behavior of flying animals with great accuracy and precision. 3D analyses can provide accurate assessments of flight performance in regard to speed, curvature, and hovering. However, there have been few applications of this technology in ecology, particularly for insects. We used this technology to analyze the behavioral interactions between the Western honey bee Apis mellifera and its invasive predator the Asian hornet, Vespa velutina nigrithorax. We investigated whether predation success could be affected by flight speed, flight curvature, and hovering of the Asian hornet and honey bees in front of one beehive. We recorded a total of 603,259 flight trajectories and 5175 predator-prey flight interactions leading to 126 successful predation events, representing 2.4% predation success. Flight speeds of hornets in front of hive entrances were much lower than that of their bee prey; in contrast to hovering capacity, while curvature range overlapped between the two species. There were large differences in speed, curvature, and hovering between the exit and entrance flights of honey bees. Interestingly, we found hornet density affected flight performance of both honey bees and hornets. Higher hornet density led to a decrease in the speed of honey bees leaving the hive, and an increase in the speed of honey bees entering the hive, together with more curved flight trajectories. These effects suggest some predator avoidance behavior by the bees. Higher honey bee flight curvature resulted in lower hornet predation success. Results showed an increase in predation success when hornet number increased up to 8 individuals, above which predation success decreased, likely due to competition among predators. Although based on a single colony, this study reveals interesting outcomes derived from the use of automated 3D tracking to derive accurate measures of individual behavior and behavioral interactions among flying species.

Dataset Information

Moku Virus in Invasive Asian Hornets, Belgium, 2016.

Publications

Moku Virus in Invasive Asian Hornets, Belgium, 2016.

Similar Datasets

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