A Costa Rican bacterial spiroplasma biodiversity survey in tabanid flies reveals new serogroups and extends United States ranges

摘要

Spiroplasmas are ubiquitous bacteria found in association with a wide range of plants and arthropods, where they can cause economically important diseases. To better understand Spiroplasma biodiversity and biogeography, a single host family (tabanid flies) was examined in detail. The current report describes spiroplasma carriage and biodiversity from tabanid flies captured at three sites in the Costa Rican lowlands.? Serological analyses placed 46 spiroplasma isolates into 13 distinct serogroups, representing seven previously described serogroups/species and six new putative species. The six new serogroups have been designated groups XLIV?toXLIX, and 16S rRNA-based phylogenetic analyses placed all serogroup representatives into the Apis clade. Twenty-one of the Costa Rican lowland isolates belonged to seven previously described serogroups from the southeastern United States and the Costa Rican highlands (>2000 m); thereby extending the ranges of these serogroups to encompass both tropical and temperate climates. Despite the commonality of spiroplasma serogroups, there was no host species overlap between Costa Rica and the United States and there was only one host species common between high and low elevations within Costa Rica. These results indicate that spiroplasma biogeographical ranges cannot simply be explained based on tight host/microbe associations and host species’ ranges.