Screening of natural Wolbachia infection in Aedes aegypti, Aedes taeniorhynchus and Culex quinquefasciatus from Guadeloupe (French West Indies)

Abstract Guadeloupe islands are threatened by several mosquito-borne viruses such as Dengue, Chikungunya, Zika and West Nile virus. It appears essential to look for alternative mosquito controlmethods such as the incompatible insect technique (ITT) aiming at sterilizing wild females by inundative releases of incompatible males. Before considering the implementation of such a strategy, the characterization of genetic diversity of the endocellular bacterium Wolbachiaregarding the local mosquito populations is a critical issue. Here, for the first time, we describe the prevalence and diversity of Wolbachiain natural populations of three mosquito species from Guadeloupe: Aedes aegypti , Aedes taeniorhynchus and Culex quinquefasciatus. The detection of Wolbachiain natural Ae. aegypti , Ae. taeniorhynchus and Cx. quinquefasciatus populations was conducted by studying Wolbachia 16S ribosomal RNAgene using a TaqManquantitative real-time PCR and results were confirmed by conventional PCR and sequencing. In addition, molecular typing of wPip strains in Cx. quinquefasciatus was done by PCR-RFLP. We did not find Wolbachiainfection in any of Ae. aegypti and Ae. taeniorhynchus studied populations. Natural Wolbachiainfection was detected in Cx. quinquefasciatus with prevalence varying from 79.2% to 95.8%. In addition, no polymorphism was found between the Wolbachiastrains infecting Cx. quinquefasciatus specimens, all carrying an infection from the same Wolbachiagenetic w Pip-I group. These results pave the way for the evaluation of the feasibility of IIT programs to fight against these medically-important mosquito species in Guadeloupe.