Presence and diversity of Chlamydiae bacteria in Spinturnix myoti, an ectoparasite of bats

Abstract

Chlamydia spp. and Chlamydia-like organisms are able to infect vertebrates such as mammals, reptiles and birds, but also arthropods and protozoans. Since they have been detected in bats and bat feces, we expected Chlamydiae bacteria to also be present in the mite Spinturnix myoti, an ectoparasite of mouse-eared bats (Myotis spp.). The prevalence of Chlamydiales in 88 S. myoti was 57.95% and significantly depended on bat host species. In addition, the prevalence was significantly different between bat species living in sympatry or in allopatry. While there was uninterpretable sequencing for 16 samples, eight showed best BLAST hit identities lower than 92.5% and thus corresponded to new family-level lineages according to the established taxonomy cut-off. The four remaining sequences exhibited best BLAST hit identities ranging from 94.2 to 97.4% and were taxonomically assigned to three different family-level lineages, with two of them belonging to the Parachlamydiaceae, one to the Simkaniaceae, and one to the Chlamydiaceae. These results highlighted for the first time the presence of Chlamydia-like organisms and the possible zoonotic origin of Chlamydia sp. in S. myoti ectoparasites of bats, and therefore suggest that these ectoparasites may play a role in maintaining and/or transmitting members of the Chlamydiae phylum within Myotis spp. bat populations. Our results further highlight that the wide diversity of bacteria belonging to the Chlamydiae phylum is largely underestimated.