Biological characterization of Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae) in Argentina: implications for arbovirus transmission

Abstract

Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae) is an invasive mosquito, native to Asia, that has expanded its range worldwide. It is considered to be a public health threat as it is a competent vector of viruses of medical importance, including dengue, chikungunya, and Zika. Despite its medical importance there is almost no information on biologically important traits of Ae. albopictus in Argentina. We studied life cycle traits, demographic parameters and analyzed the competence of this mosquito as a virus vector. In addition, we determined the prevalence of Wolbachia strains in Ae. albopictus as a first approach to investigate the potential role of this bacteria in modulating vector competence for arboviruses. We observed low hatch rates of eggs, which led to a negative growth rate. We found that Ae. albopictus individuals were infected with Wolbachia in the F1 but while standard superinfection with wAlbA and wAlbB types was found in 66.7% of the females, 16.7% of the females and 62.5% of the males were single-infected with the wAlbB strain. Finally, despite high levels of infection and dissemination, particularly for chikungunya virus, Ae. albopictus from subtropical Argentina were found to be relatively inefficient vectors for transmission of both chikungunya and dengue viruses.

Invasive mosquito species Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus: genetics (COI, ITS2), Wolbachia and Dirofilaria infections

“…albopictus are able to cause outbreaks of dengue and chicagunya infections even in absence of Ae. aegypti (Delatte et al, 2008;Delisle et al, 2015;Calba et al, 2017;Chuchuy et al, 2018). In the Russian Federation these species were first found in 2011 (Ganushkina et al, 2012).…”

Identification, ecological indices and management of mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) influencing environmental education processes in Colombian high schools

“…In addition to the educational strategies aimed at reducing the number of VBDs, there are control mechanisms such as the following: (a) control of mosquito birth rate: avoiding ideal habitats for the development of mosquitoes, removing standing water, and cleaning domestic water containers (OMS 2020c); (b) control with insecticides: their use is limited owing to mosquito resistance and tolerance mechanisms as well as potential risks to human and environmental health (Rajesh et al 2013). However, for the effective control of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, OMS (2020b) recommends the use of mosquito nets with insecticides and fumigation with residual insecticides; (c) biological control: infecting mosquitoes with bacteria of the genus Wolbachia, which helps decrease their vectorial capacity (Chuchuy et al 2018;Anderson et al 2019;Cardona-Salgado et al 2020). Additionally, the use of actinobacteria that act as larvicides has shown great effectiveness against Culex mosquito larvae (Rajesh et al 2013).…”

Sex-specific distribution and classification ofWolbachiainfections and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups inAedes albopictusfrom the Indo-Pacific

“…We can compare our results to the Wolbachia infection status of Ae. albopictus in the Indo-Pacific region determined in previous studies [11,14,22,23,[44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] (Table S2). These studies and ours highlight that the wAlbA/wAlbB superinfection or wAlbB single infection are present in most natural Ae.…”