Prospecting for viral natural enemies of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta in Argentina

Valles, Steven M.; Porter, Sanford D.; Calcaterra, Luis A.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0192377

Cited by 23 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Viral genomes have been mined for biopesticides and self-assembling nanomaterials (62,63). Viruses have been proposed, and used, as biocontrol agents for culling invasive organisms including fire ants, rabbits and moths (64)(65)(66). Viruses are also being investigated as biocontrol agents for devastating plant pathogens such as, Fusarium sp., Botrytis cinereal and Rosellinia necatrix (6,31,(67)(68)(69)(70)(71).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metatranscriptomic reconstruction reveals RNA viruses with the potential to shape carbon cycling in soil

Starr

Nuccio

Pett‐Ridge

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Viruses impact nearly all organisms on Earth, with ripples of influence in agriculture, health and biogeochemical processes. However, very little is known about RNA viruses in an environmental context, and even less is known about their diversity and ecology in the most complex microbial system, soil. Here, we assembled 48 individual metatranscriptomes from four habitats within a soil sampled over a 22-day time series: rhizosphere alone, detritosphere alone, a combination of the two, and unamended soil (four time points and three biological replicates per time point). We resolved the RNA viral community, uncovering a high diversity of viral sequences. We also investigated possible host organisms by analyzing metatranscriptome marker gene content. Based on viral phylogeny, much of the diversity was Narnaviridae that parasitize fungi or Leviviridae that infect Proteobacteria. Both host and viral communities appear to be highly dynamic, and rapidly diverged depending on experimental conditions. The viral communities were structured based on the presence of litter, while putative hosts appeared to be impacted by both the presence of litter and roots. A clear time signature from Leviviridae and their hosts indicated that viruses were replicating. With this time-resolved analysis, we show that RNA viruses are diverse, abundant and active in soil. Their replication causes host cell death, mobilizing carbon in a process that represents a largely overlooked component of carbon cycling in soil.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metatranscriptomic reconstruction reveals RNA viruses with the potential to shape carbon cycling in soil

Starr

Nuccio

Pett‐Ridge

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…To date, four of five viruses previously reported associated with S. invicta in introduced areas have also been previously described to occur in its native origin (11,21). Although viral diversity associated with S. invicta has been deeply studied in Argentina, the viruses reported in this study have not been detected there yet (11,30). To gain further insight about the new viruses' distribution in S. invicta native range, eight transcriptome libraries publicly available at SRA, were analyzed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Curiously, while a great diversity of positive and negative sense viruses has been reported from ants (9, 10) and arthropods (2), S. invicta virome has been composed mainly of +ssRNA viruses in the order Picornavirales, with no negative sense RNA viruses previously reported. One factor that could be responsible for this bias is the selection of polyadenylated RNA for library preparation, in previous studies (11,30). The utilization of unbiased library preparation, using ribosomal depletion methods, besides the detection of +ssRNA viruses, has enabled the discovery of many viruses with non-polyadenylated genome, especially within order Bunyavirales (2).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ever-increasing viral diversity associated with the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta (Formicidae: Hymenoptera)

Xavier

Allen

Whitfield

2020

Preprint

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BackgroundAdvances in sequencing and analysis tools have facilitated discovery of many new viruses from invertebrates, including ants. Solenopsis invicta is an invasive ant that has quickly spread around world causing significant ecological and economic impacts. Its virome has begun to be characterized pertaining to potential use of viruses as natural enemies. Although the S. invicta virome is best characterized among ants, most studies have been performed in its native range, with little information from invaded areas.MethodsUsing a metatranscriptome approach, we further characterized viruses associated with S. invicta, in two introduced areas, U.S and Taiwan. The data set used here was obtained from different stages (larvae, pupa, and adults) of S. invicta life cycle. Publicly available RNA sequences from GenBank’s Sequence Read Archive were downloaded and de novo assembled using CLC Genomics Workbench 20.0.1. Contigs were compared against the non-redundant protein sequences and those showing similarity to viral sequences were further analyzed.ResultsWe characterized five putative new viruses associated with S. invicta transcriptomes. Sequence comparisons revealed extensive divergence across ORFs and genomic regions with most of them sharing less than 40% amino acid identity with those closest homologous sequences previously characterized. The first negative-sense single-stranded RNA viruses included in the orders Bunyavirales and Mononegavirales are reported. In addition, two positive single-strand viruses and one single strand DNA virus were also characterized. While the presence of a putative tenuivirus associated with S. invicta was previously suggested to be a contamination, here we characterized and present strong evidence that Solenopsis invicta virus 14 (SINV-14) is a tenui-like virus that has a long-term association with the ant. Furthermore, based on virus abundance compared to housekeeping genes, phylogenetic relationships, and completeness of viral coding sequences, our results suggest that four of five viruses reported, those being SINV-14, SINV-15, SINV-16 and SINV-17, replicate in the ant S. invicta.ConclusionsThe present study expands our knowledge about viral diversity associated with S. invicta in introduced areas with potential to be used as biological control agents, which will require further biological characterization.

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“…Lower viral pressure in the introduced range may promote invasion success in two ways. First, ants are known to harbour a range of viruses (Valles et al 2007(Valles et al , 2018Sébastien et al 2015;Cooling et al 2017;Gruber et al 2017;Viljakainen et al 2018;Valles and Rivers 2019) and lower viral pressure may directly increase their fitness. For instance, viral infections in the red imported fire ant have been shown to influence colony foraging performance (Hsu et al 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Native and introduced Argentine ant populations are characterised by distinct transcriptomic signatures associated with behaviour and immunity

Felden

Paris

Chapple³

et al. 2019

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Biological invasions can be influenced by trait variation in the invader, such as behavioural traits and ecological factors, such as variation in pathogen pressure. High-throughput nucleotide sequencing has increased our capacity to investigate the genomic basis of the functional changes associated with biological invasions. Here, we used RNA-sequencing in Argentina and California, Australia and New Zealand to investigate if native and introduced Argentine ant populations were characterised by distinct transcriptomic signatures. We focused our analysis on viral pressure and immunity, as well as genes associated with biogenic amines known to modulate key behaviour in social insects. Using a combination of differential expression analysis, gene co-expression network analysis and candidate gene approach, we show that native and introduced populations have distinct transcriptomic signatures. Genes associated with biogenic amines were overall up-regulated in the native range compared to introduced populations. Although we found no significant variation in overall viral loads amongst regions for viruses known to infect Argentine ants, viral diversity was lower in most of the introduced range which was interestingly associated with down-regulation of the RNAi immune pathway, primarily directed against viruses. Altogether, our data show that Argentine ant populations exhibit range-specific transcriptomic signatures, perhaps reflecting regional adaptations that may contribute to the ecological success of introduced populations.

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Prospecting for viral natural enemies of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta in Argentina

Cited by 23 publications

References 40 publications

Metatranscriptomic reconstruction reveals RNA viruses with the potential to shape carbon cycling in soil

Metatranscriptomic reconstruction reveals RNA viruses with the potential to shape carbon cycling in soil

Ever-increasing viral diversity associated with the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta (Formicidae: Hymenoptera)

Native and introduced Argentine ant populations are characterised by distinct transcriptomic signatures associated with behaviour and immunity

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