Identification and characterization of animal-infecting Bunyavirales members within an herbivorous thrips species

A crop infesting thrips (Thysanoptera) species, Frankliniella fusca (Hinds), accounts for heavy losses in peanut production in Georgia mainly through transmission of an orthotospovirus. While the role of thrips in the transmission of orthotospoviruses is well established, the diversity of other viruses contained within such thrips species and their interactions with orthotospoviruses is relatively unknown. High-throughput sequencing revealed that this thrips species harbors a diverse virome, including insect-specific (animal-infecting) viruses, which potentially could have mutualistic associations with plant viruses and could influence thrips biology and plant virus transmission ability. Virome analyzed from thrips samples detected the presence of both plant-infecting and insect-specific viruses. Besides plant-infecting tomato spotted wilt orthotospovirus, insect-specific viruses including bunya-like, peribunya-like, nairo-like, and tenui-like viruses (Bunyavirales) and several unclassified viruses (potentially animal-infecting) were identified. Abundance comparison revealed that insect-specific (animal-infecting) virus reads were higher than plant-infecting orthotospovirus transcripts reads. Incidence and quantitation of the detected animal-infecting viruses are being determined in individual field collected thrips samples and will be correlated with orthotospovirus accumulation levels. The possible role of the thrips-specific (animal-infecting) viruses in relation to orthotospovirus transmission is also being investigated.