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Relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in Korea

BACKGROUND: Bats are hosts for many ectoparasites and act as reservoirs for several infectious agents, some of which exhibit zoonotic potential. Here, species of bats and bat flies were identified and screened for microorganisms that could be mediated by bat flies. METHODS: Bat species were identifi...

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Autores principales: Lee, Haeseung, Seo, Min-Goo, Lee, Seung-Hun, Oem, Jae-Ku, Kim, Seon-Hee, Jeong, Hyesung, Kim, Yongkwan, Jheong, Weon-Hwa, Kwon, Oh-Deog, Kwak, Dongmi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8477550/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34579766
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-021-05016-6
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author Lee, Haeseung
Seo, Min-Goo
Lee, Seung-Hun
Oem, Jae-Ku
Kim, Seon-Hee
Jeong, Hyesung
Kim, Yongkwan
Jheong, Weon-Hwa
Kwon, Oh-Deog
Kwak, Dongmi
author_facet Lee, Haeseung
Seo, Min-Goo
Lee, Seung-Hun
Oem, Jae-Ku
Kim, Seon-Hee
Jeong, Hyesung
Kim, Yongkwan
Jheong, Weon-Hwa
Kwon, Oh-Deog
Kwak, Dongmi
author_sort Lee, Haeseung
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Bats are hosts for many ectoparasites and act as reservoirs for several infectious agents, some of which exhibit zoonotic potential. Here, species of bats and bat flies were identified and screened for microorganisms that could be mediated by bat flies. METHODS: Bat species were identified on the basis of their morphological characteristics. Bat flies associated with bat species were initially morphologically identified and further identified at the genus level by analyzing the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene. Different vector-borne pathogens and endosymbionts were screened using PCR to assess all possible relationships among bats, parasitic bat flies, and their associated organisms. RESULTS: Seventy-four bat flies were collected from 198 bats; 66 of these belonged to Nycteribiidae and eight to Streblidae families. All Streblidae bat flies were hosted by Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, known as the most common Korean bat. Among the 74 tested bat flies, PCR and nucleotide sequencing data showed that 35 (47.3%) and 20 (27.0%) carried Wolbachia and Bartonella bacteria, respectively, whereas tests for Anaplasma, Borrelia, Hepatozoon, Babesia, Theileria, and Coxiella were negative. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that Wolbachia endosymbionts belonged to two different supergroups, A and F. One sequence of Bartonella was identical to that of Bartonella isolated from Taiwanese bats. CONCLUSIONS: The vectorial role of bat flies should be checked by testing the same pathogen and bacterial organisms by collecting blood from host bats. This study is of great interest in the fields of disease ecology and public health owing to the bats’ potential to transmit pathogens to humans and/or livestock. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13071-021-05016-6.
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spelling pubmed-84775502021-09-29 Relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in Korea Lee, Haeseung Seo, Min-Goo Lee, Seung-Hun Oem, Jae-Ku Kim, Seon-Hee Jeong, Hyesung Kim, Yongkwan Jheong, Weon-Hwa Kwon, Oh-Deog Kwak, Dongmi Parasit Vectors Research BACKGROUND: Bats are hosts for many ectoparasites and act as reservoirs for several infectious agents, some of which exhibit zoonotic potential. Here, species of bats and bat flies were identified and screened for microorganisms that could be mediated by bat flies. METHODS: Bat species were identified on the basis of their morphological characteristics. Bat flies associated with bat species were initially morphologically identified and further identified at the genus level by analyzing the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene. Different vector-borne pathogens and endosymbionts were screened using PCR to assess all possible relationships among bats, parasitic bat flies, and their associated organisms. RESULTS: Seventy-four bat flies were collected from 198 bats; 66 of these belonged to Nycteribiidae and eight to Streblidae families. All Streblidae bat flies were hosted by Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, known as the most common Korean bat. Among the 74 tested bat flies, PCR and nucleotide sequencing data showed that 35 (47.3%) and 20 (27.0%) carried Wolbachia and Bartonella bacteria, respectively, whereas tests for Anaplasma, Borrelia, Hepatozoon, Babesia, Theileria, and Coxiella were negative. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that Wolbachia endosymbionts belonged to two different supergroups, A and F. One sequence of Bartonella was identical to that of Bartonella isolated from Taiwanese bats. CONCLUSIONS: The vectorial role of bat flies should be checked by testing the same pathogen and bacterial organisms by collecting blood from host bats. This study is of great interest in the fields of disease ecology and public health owing to the bats’ potential to transmit pathogens to humans and/or livestock. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13071-021-05016-6. BioMed Central 2021-09-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8477550/ /pubmed/34579766 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-021-05016-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Lee, Haeseung
Seo, Min-Goo
Lee, Seung-Hun
Oem, Jae-Ku
Kim, Seon-Hee
Jeong, Hyesung
Kim, Yongkwan
Jheong, Weon-Hwa
Kwon, Oh-Deog
Kwak, Dongmi
Relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in Korea
title Relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in Korea
title_full Relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in Korea
title_fullStr Relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in Korea
title_full_unstemmed Relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in Korea
title_short Relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in Korea
title_sort relationship among bats, parasitic bat flies, and associated pathogens in korea
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8477550/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34579766
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-021-05016-6
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