Tracking zoonotic pathogens using blood-sucking flies as 'flying syringes'
- Biogéosciences Unit, UMR 6282 CNRS-uB-EPHE-AgroSup, Équipe Écologie-Évolutive, France
- Centre International de Recherches Médicales de Franceville, Gabon
- UMR 224-5290 IRD-CNRS-UM, Centre IRD de Montpellier, France
- Université de Yaoundé 1, Cameroon
Abstract
About 60% of emerging infectious diseases in humans are of zoonotic origin. Their increasing number requires the development of new methods for early detection and monitoring of infectious agents in wildlife. Here, we investigated whether blood meals from hematophagous flies could be used to identify the infectious agents circulating in wild vertebrates. To this aim, 1230 blood-engorged flies were caught in the forests of Gabon. Identified blood meals (30%) were from 20 vertebrate species including mammals, birds and reptiles. Among them, 9% were infected by different extant malaria parasites among which some belonged to known parasite species, others to new parasite species or to parasite lineages for which only the vector was known. This study demonstrates that using hematophagous flies as 'flying syringes' constitutes an interesting approach to investigate blood-borne pathogen diversity in wild vertebrates and could be used as an early detection tool of zoonotic pathogens.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie
- Paul-Yannick Bitome-Essono
- Flobert Njiokou
- François Bretagnolle
- Franck Prugnolle
- Christophe Paupy
Service de Coopération et d'Action Culturelle de l'ambassade de France au Gabon
- Paul-Yannick Bitome-Essono
- François Bretagnolle
LMI ZOFAC IRD
- Benjamin Ollomo
- Franck Prugnolle
- Christophe Paupy
CIRMF
- Paul-Yannick Bitome-Essono
- Benjamin Ollomo
- Diego Ayala
- Virginie Rougeron
- Franck Prugnolle
- Christophe Paupy
ANR JCJC 07-2012-ORIGIN
- Virginie Rougeron
- Franck Prugnolle
- Christophe Paupy
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Ben Cooper, Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, Thailand
Version history
- Received: October 4, 2016
- Accepted: March 14, 2017
- Accepted Manuscript published: March 28, 2017 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: May 11, 2017 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2017, Bitome-Essono et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Tracking zoonotic pathogens using blood-sucking flies as 'flying syringes'
eLife 6:e22069.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22069
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