Isolation of a Trypanosome Related to Trypanosoma theileri (Kinetoplastea: Trypanosomatidae) from Phlebotomus perfiliewi (Diptera: Psychodidae)

Abstract

The Trypanosoma theileri group includes several trypanosome species hardly distinguishable due to the lack of discriminating morphological characters. Trypanosomes belonging to this group have been isolated from different bovine, ovine, and cervids in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Americas. The principal vectors of the T. theileri group are considered tabanid flies; however, T. melophagium is transmitted exclusively by sheep keds. In 2016, 128 sand flies out of 2,728 trapped in Valsamoggia municipality, Italy, were individually dissected and an unknown trypanosome strain, named TrPhp1, was isolated from a female of the sand fly Phlebotomus perfiliewi. Sequence analysis placed this trypanosome in the T. theileri group with very high homology to other trypanosomes detected in European cervids. This is the first report of the T. theileri group isolation from a sand fly, and the possible role of this insect group in the trypanosome transmission cycle is discussed. Within the T. theileri group, the phylogenetic analysis distinguished several lineages, which, unfortunately, do not correspond with their host specificity and their taxonomic status remains ambiguous.

Identification of trypanosomatids and blood feeding preferences of phlebotomine sand fly species common in Sicily, Southern Italy

“…in sand flies has been little reported. In particular, Trypanosoma platydactyli was described in S. minuta [42], and the infection by a Trypanosoma belonging to Trypanosoma theileri group with very high homology to other trypanosomes detected in European cervids was recently reported in Phlebotomus perfiliewi [43]. In the Mediterranean area, Trypanosoma nabiasi, a rabbit trypanosome, and its co-infection with L. infantum was found in P. perniciosus female sand flies caught in the context of human leishmaniosis outbreak in Madrid [44], and natural infection of sand flies by trypanosomes of lizards, amphibians, birds and rodents has been already reported mainly from the American continent and Asia [45][46][47][48].…”

First record of Trypanosoma theileri-like flagellates in horseflies from Northwest Russia

“…(Hippoboscidae) (Hoare, 1923;Gibson et al, 2010;Martinkovic et al, 2012). Other hematophagous arthropods are also likely to play this role for T. theileri-like trypanosomes (Fisher et al, 2013;Calzolari et al, 2018).…”

Pan-American Trypanosoma (Megatrypanum) perronei sp. n. in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and its deer ked Lipoptena mazamae: morphological, developmental and phylogeographical characterisation

“…Interestingly, T. perronei sp. n. is more related to deer trypanosomes from Germany, Croatia, Poland and Russia, all nested into TthII lineage [15,29,31,54], than to trypanosomes found in sympatric WTD and elk (USA) nested into TthI, a lineage also harbouring a trypanosome of Japanese sika deer [12,16]. American WTD, and these two species are estimated to have diverged just by 0.3-0.9 mya [62].…”

“…Regarding the relationship between cervid and bovid trypanosomes, ITS1 rDNA sequences of T. melophagium diverged by ~18% from T. perronei while divergences above 24% separated T. perronei from trypanosomes of cattle (TthII A and TthII B) and antelopes (TthII F, G, E, I) [25]. Interestingly, ITS1 rDNA sequence of a trypanosome obtained from the gut of an Italian sand fly [54] was virtually identical to those of T. sp.…”

“…To date, deer flies, which have been experimentally proven to transmit deer trypanosomes, and deer keds have been implicated as vectors of cervid trypanosomes [21,29,31,36,38,56,57]. Recent studies report on DNA from deer trypanosomes in guts of sand flies and culicids [54,58], but their roles as vectors remains to be investigated.…”