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.
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.
Metrics
-
- 5,697
- views
-
- 716
- downloads
-
- 34
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Tracking zoonotic pathogens using blood-sucking flies as 'flying syringes'
eLife 6:e22069.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22069
Further reading
-
- Ecology
Optimal foraging theory posits that foragers adjust their movements based on prey abundance to optimize food intake. While extensively studied in terrestrial and marine environments, aerial foraging has remained relatively unexplored due to technological limitations. This study, uniquely combining BirdScan-MR1 radar and the Advanced Tracking and Localization of Animals in Real-Life Systems biotelemetry system, investigates the foraging dynamics of Little Swifts (Apus affinis) in response to insect movements over Israel’s Hula Valley. Insect movement traffic rate (MoTR) substantially varied across days, strongly influencing swift movement. On days with high MoTR, swifts exhibited reduced flight distance, increased colony visit rate, and earlier arrivals at the breeding colony, reflecting a dynamic response to prey availability. However, no significant effects were observed in total foraging duration, flight speed, or daily route length. Notably, as insect abundance increased, inter-individual distances decreased. These findings suggest that Little Swifts optimize their foraging behavior in relation to aerial insect abundance, likely influencing reproductive success and population dynamics. The integration of radar technology and biotelemetry systems provides a unique perspective on the interactions between aerial insectivores and their prey, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of optimal foraging strategies in diverse environments.
-
- Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
Understanding the origins of novel, complex phenotypes is a major goal in evolutionary biology. Poison frogs of the family Dendrobatidae have evolved the novel ability to acquire alkaloids from their diet for chemical defense at least three times. However, taxon sampling for alkaloids has been biased towards colorful species, without similar attention paid to inconspicuous ones that are often assumed to be undefended. As a result, our understanding of how chemical defense evolved in this group is incomplete. Here, we provide new data showing that, in contrast to previous studies, species from each undefended poison frog clade have measurable yet low amounts of alkaloids. We confirm that undefended dendrobatids regularly consume mites and ants, which are known sources of alkaloids. Thus, our data suggest that diet is insufficient to explain the defended phenotype. Our data support the existence of a phenotypic intermediate between toxin consumption and sequestration — passive accumulation — that differs from sequestration in that it involves no derived forms of transport and storage mechanisms yet results in low levels of toxin accumulation. We discuss the concept of passive accumulation and its potential role in the origin of chemical defenses in poison frogs and other toxin-sequestering organisms. In light of ideas from pharmacokinetics, we incorporate new and old data from poison frogs into an evolutionary model that could help explain the origins of acquired chemical defenses in animals and provide insight into the molecular processes that govern the fate of ingested toxins.
