Experimental studies of susceptibility of Italian Aedes albopictus to Zika virus

Abstract

We report a study on vector competence of an Italian population of Aedes albopictus for Zika virus (ZIKV). Ae. albopictus was susceptible to ZIKV infection (infection rate: 10%), and the virus could disseminate and was secreted in the mosquito’s saliva (dissemination rate: 29%; transmission rate: 29%) after an extrinsic incubation period of 11 days. The observed vector competence was lower than that of an Ae. aegypti colony tested in parallel.