Diverse novel Wolbachia bacteria strains and widespread co-infections with Asaia bacteria in Culicine mosquitoes from ecologically diverse regions of Cameroon
Bibliographic record
Abstract
<ns4:p> <ns4:bold>Background:</ns4:bold> The endosymbiotic bacterium <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> infects numerous species of insects and <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> transinfection of <ns4:italic>Aedes</ns4:italic> mosquito species <ns4:italic/> is now being used for biocontrol programs as <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> strains can both inhibit arboviruses and invade wild mosquito populations. The discovery of novel, resident <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> strains in mosquito species warrants further investigation as potential candidate strains for biocontrol strategies. </ns4:p> <ns4:p> <ns4:bold>Methods:</ns4:bold> We obtained mosquito specimens from diverse Culicine mosquitoes from Cameroon including ecologically diverse locations in the Central and West Regions. <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> prevalence rates were assessed in addition to the environmentally acquired bacterial species <ns4:italic>Asaia</ns4:italic> in major Culicine genera. PCR-based methods were also used with phylogenetic analysis to confirm identities of host mosquito species and <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> strains were classified using multi-locus sequence typing (MLST). </ns4:p> <ns4:p> <ns4:bold>Results</ns4:bold> : We report high <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> prevalence rates for Culicine species, including in a large cohort of <ns4:italic>Aedes africanus</ns4:italic> collected from west Cameroon in which 100% of mono-specific pools were infected. Furthermore, co-infections with <ns4:italic>Asaia</ns4:italic> bacteria were observed across multiple genera, demonstrating that these two bacteria can co-exist in wild mosquito populations. <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> strain MLST and phylogenetic analysis <ns4:italic/> provided evidence for diverse <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> strains in 13 different mosquito species across seven different genera. Full or partial MLST profiles were generated from resident <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> strains in six <ns4:italic>Culex</ns4:italic> species ( <ns4:italic>quinquefasciatus</ns4:italic> , <ns4:italic>watti</ns4:italic> , <ns4:italic>cinerus, nigripalpus, perexiguus</ns4:italic> and <ns4:italic>rima),</ns4:italic> two <ns4:italic>Aedes</ns4:italic> species <ns4:italic>(africanus</ns4:italic> and <ns4:italic>denderensis)</ns4:italic> and in <ns4:italic>Mansonia uniformis, Catageiomyia argenteopunctata, Lutzia tigripes, Eretmapodites chrysogaster</ns4:italic> and <ns4:italic>Uranotaenia bilineata.</ns4:italic> </ns4:p> <ns4:p> <ns4:bold>Conclusions:</ns4:bold> Our study provides further evidence that <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> is widespread within wild mosquito populations of diverse Culicine species and provides further candidate strains that could be investigated as future options for <ns4:italic>Wolbachia</ns4:italic> -based biocontrol to inhibit arbovirus transmission. </ns4:p>
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".