Virus discovery and recent insights into virus diversity in arthropods

Abstract

Recent studies on virus discovery have focused mainly on mammalian and avian viruses. Arbovirology with its long tradition of ecologically oriented investigation is now catching up, with important novel insights into the diversity of arthropod-associated viruses. Recent discoveries include taxonomically outlying viruses within the families Flaviviridae, Togaviridae, and Bunyaviridae, and even novel virus families within the order Nidovirales. However, the current focusing of studies on blood-feeding arthropods has restricted the range of arthropod hosts analyzed for viruses so far. Future investigations should include species from other arthropod taxa than Ixodita, Culicidae and Phlebotominae in order to shed light on the true diversity of arthropod viruses.

Figure 1

Geographic distribution of recent discoveries of novel arthropod-associated viruses. Countries where prototype viruses have been identified are marked in red. Virus names are shown in bold and host species in italic. Numbers in parenthesis are references.

Figure 2

Phylogenetic relationship of prototype arthropod-associated viruses and avian and mammalian viruses. Maximum likelihood analyses of the family Bunyaviridae (a) and the order Nidovirales (b). Arthropod-viruses are shown in red. Associated hosts are indicated by silhouettes to the right.