Highly Divergent and Diverse Viral Community Infecting Sylvatic Mosquitoes from Northeast Brazil

Mosquitoes can transmit several pathogenic viruses to humans, but their natural viral community is also composed of many insect-specific viruses (ISV) that modulate arthropod-borne virus (arbovirus) transmission and mosquito fitness. Besides a growing number of studies investigating the mosquito virome the majority are focused on few urban species and relatively little is known about the virome of sylvatic mosquitoes. Here, we characterized the RNA virome of 10 sylvatic mosquitos species from Atlantic forest remains at a sylvatic-urban interface in Northeast Brazil employing a metatranscriptomic approach. We detected a total of 21 viral families. The phylogenetic reconstructions of 13 viral families revealed that the majority of the sequences are putative ISVs. The phylogenetic positioning and, in most cases, the association with a high RdRp amino acid divergence from other known viruses suggests that the viruses characterized here represent 60 new viral species. Therefore, the sylvatic mosquitoes viral community revealed a predominance of highly divergent viruses highlighting the limited knowledge we still have about the natural virome that infect these blood feeding insects. Moreover, we found a strong species-virome association as none of the viruses recovered were shared between the species investigated. These background findings will help to understand the interactions and coevolution between mosquito and viruses in nature.