New Vibrio species associated to molluscan microbiota: a review

Abstract

The genus Vibrio consists of more than 100 species grouped in 14 clades that are widely distributed in aquatic environments such as estuarine, coastal waters, and sediments. A large number of species of this genus are associated with marine organisms like fish, molluscs and crustaceans, in commensal or pathogenic relations. In the last decade, more than 50 new species have been described in the genus Vibrio, due to the introduction of new molecular techniques in bacterial taxonomy, such as multilocus sequence analysis or fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism. On the other hand, the increasing number of environmental studies has contributed to improve the knowledge about the family Vibrionaceae and its phylogeny. Vibrio crassostreae, V. breoganii, V. celticus are some of the new Vibrio species described as forming part of the molluscan microbiota. Some of them have been associated with mortalities of different molluscan species, seriously affecting their culture and causing high losses in hatcheries as well as in natural beds. For other species, ecological importance has been demonstrated being highly abundant in different marine habitats and geographical regions. The present work provides an updated overview of the recently characterized Vibrio species isolated from molluscs. In addition, their pathogenic potential and/or environmental importance is discussed.

Host‐microbiota interactions shed light on mortality events in the striped venus clam Chamelea gallina

“…In our study, 50% and 30% of significantly over‐represented taxa in T4 and T7, respectively were assigned to Vibrio genera or Vibrionaceae family. Species‐level identification, however, was possible only for 7 OTUs, which were represented by Vibrio fortis , Vibrio ichthyoenteri and Vibrio shilonii , already proposed as potential pathogens in others marine species (Austin, Austin, Sutherland, Thompson, & Swings, ; Ding, Dou, Wang, & Chang, ; Ishimaru, Akagawa, & Muroga, ; Romalde, Diguez, Lasa, & Balboa, ; Rosenberg, Kushmaro, Kramarsky‐Winter, Banin, & Yossi, ; Wang, Zhang, Qin, Luo, & Lin, ).…”

“…In the present study, members of the genus Photobacterium , such as Photobacterium damselae , were over‐represented in T4 and T7. Photobacterium damselae is a pathogen of a variety of marine animals including cultured fish species (Labella, Manchado, et al, ; Labella, Sanchez‐Montes, et al, ; Labella et al, ; Pedersen, Skall, Lassen‐Nielsen, Bjerrum, & Olesen, ; Romalde et al, ). P. damselae has also been isolated in Octopus joubini (Hanlon et al, ) and commercial bivalve species such as Mytilus galloprovincialis (Lozano‐León, Osorio, Nuñez, Martínez‐Urtaza, & Magariños, ) and oysters (Richards, Watson, Crane, Burt, & Bushek, ).…”

Species diversity, spatial distribution, and virulence associated genes of culturable vibrios in a brackish coastal Mediterranean environment

“…Among the environmental species, the highest frequency was in V. kanaloae (2 tdh+and 6 trh+iso-lates) and, to our knowledge, this is the first report of the presence of these haemolysins in V. kanaloae. As V. kanaloae is often associated with molluscs (Romalde et al 2014) and is endowed of a pathogenic potential for fish and crustaceans (Austin et al 2005), the possible presence of such haemolysins in this species should be kept in mind whenever considering the risk of sea-food borne diseases.…”

Quorum sensing is required for full virulence of Vibrio campbellii towards tiger grouper (Epinephelus fuscoguttatus) larvae

“…Vibrio spp. are major pathogens in the intensive rearing of molluscs (Romalde, Dieguez, Lasa, & Balboa, ), crustaceans (Manilal et al., ) and finfishes (Austin & Austin, ; Pietrak, Molloy, Bouchard, Singer, & Bricknell, ) in various marine and brackish habitats, and Vibrio campbellii is amongst the most important pathogens in aquaculture (Ruwandeepika et al., ). Several studies have investigated pathogenicity mechanisms of these bacteria in order to understand the infection process and to develop novel therapies based on this knowledge.…”