Facultatively ectoparasitic mites as vectors for entomopathogenic bacteria in Drosophila

Emily K Stone; Emily S Durkin; Andrew Cook; Elise A Richardson; Brian P Lazzaro; Carl N Keiser

doi:10.1016/j.jip.2024.108084

Facultatively ectoparasitic mites as vectors for entomopathogenic bacteria in Drosophila

J Invertebr Pathol. 2024 Mar 6:204:108084. doi: 10.1016/j.jip.2024.108084. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Emily K Stone¹, Emily S Durkin², Andrew Cook³, Elise A Richardson¹, Brian P Lazzaro⁴, Carl N Keiser¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biology, University of Florida. Gainesville, FL, USA.
² Department of Biology, University of Florida. Gainesville, FL, USA; Department of Biology, University of Tampa. Tampa, FL, USA. Electronic address: edurkin@utampa.edu.
³ Department of Biology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
⁴ Departments of Entomology, Cornell University. Ithaca, NY, USA; Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University. Ithaca, NY, USA.

PMID: 38452853
DOI: 10.1016/j.jip.2024.108084

Abstract

Opportunistic bacterial infections are common in insect populations but there is little information on how they are acquired or transmitted. We tested the hypothesis that Macrocheles mites can transmit systemic bacterial infections between Drosophila hosts. We found that 24% of mites acquired detectable levels of bacteria after feeding on infected flies and 87% of infected mites passed bacteria to naïve recipient flies. The probability that a mite could pass Serratia from an infected donor fly to a naïve recipient fly was 27.1%. These data demonstrate that Macrocheles mites are capable of serving as vectors of bacterial infection between insects.

Keywords: Bacterial infection; Drosophila melanogaster; Macrocheles; Serratia.