African army ants at the forefront of virome surveillance in a remote tropical forestuse asterix (*) to get italics

Matthieu Fritz, Berenice Reggiardo, Denis Filloux, Lisa Claude, Emmanuel Fernandez, Frederic Mahe, Simona Kraberger, Joy M. Custer, Pierre Becquart, Telstar Ndong Mebaley, Linda Bohou Kombila, Leadisaelle H. Lenguiya, Larson Boundenga, Illich M. Mombo, Gael Darren Maganga, Fabien R. Niama, Jean-Sylvain Koumba, Mylene Ogliastro, Michel Yvon, Darren Martin, Stephane Blanc, Arvind Varsani, Eric Leroy, Philippe RoumagnacPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2023

<p style="text-align: justify;">In this study, we used a predator-enabled metagenomics strategy to sample the virome of a remote and difficult-to-access densely forested African tropical region. Specifically, we focused our study on the use of army ants of the genus Dorylus that are obligate collective foragers and group predators that attack and overwhelm a broad array of animal prey. Using 209 army ant samples collected from 29 colonies and the virion-associated nucleic acid-based metagenomics approach, we showed that a broad diversity of bacterial, plant, invertebrate and vertebrate viral sequences were accumulated by army ants: including sequences from 157 different viral genera in 56 viral families. This suggests that using predators and scavengers such as army ants to sample broad swathes of tropical forest viromes can shed light on the composition and the structure of viral populations of these complex and inaccessible ecosystems.</p>

https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.13.520061You should fill this box only if you chose 'All or part of the results presented in this preprint are based on data'. URL must start with http:// or https://

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7636216You should fill this box only if you chose 'Scripts were used to obtain or analyze the results'. URL must start with http:// or https://

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7636216You should fill this box only if you chose 'Codes have been used in this study'. URL must start with http:// or https://

Army ants, Predator Enabled Metagenomics, plant viruses, animal viruses, remote ecosystems

NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).

Ecohealth, Ecology of hosts, infectious agents, or vectors, One Health, Reservoirs, Viruses

Judit Penzes (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey), judit.penzes@rutgers.edu, Edward Holmes (The University of Sydney), edward.holmes@sydney.edu.au No need for them to be recommenders of PCIInfections. Please do not suggest reviewers for whom there might be a conflict of interest. Reviewers are not allowed to review preprints written by close colleagues (with whom they have published in the last four years, with whom they have received joint funding in the last four years, or with whom they are currently writing a manuscript, or submitting a grant proposal), or by family members, friends, or anyone for whom bias might affect the nature of the review - see the code of conduct

2022-12-14 11:57:40

Sebastien Massart