Culicoides biting midges (Diptera, Ceratopogonidae) in various climatic zones of Russia and adjacent lands

Culicoides biting midges play an important role in the epidemiology of many vector-borne infections, including bluetongue virus, an internationally important virus of ruminants. The territory of the Russian Federation includes regions with diverse climatic conditions and a wide range of habitats suitable for Culicoides. This review summarizes available data on Culicoides studied in the Russian Federation covering geographically different regions, as well as findings from adjacent countries. Previous literature on species composition, ranges of dominant species, breeding sites, and host preferences is reviewed and suggestions made for future studies to elucidate vector-virus relationships.

Avian hepatitis E virus identified in Russian chicken flocks exhibits high genetic divergence based on the ORF2 capsid gene

A total of 79 liver samples from clinically sick and asymptomatic chickens were tested for avian hepatitis E virus (aHEV). Samples were received from 19 farms, five of which tested positive with primers targeting the ORF2 capsid gene. The phylogenetic analysis of a 242-base-pair fragment demonstrated that the Russian aHEV isolates share between 78.2 and 96.2% over the fragment sequenced, whereas the nucleotide sequence identities between the Russian isolates and the other representatives from GeneBank varied from 76.3 to 96.2%. The homology between the studied hepatitis E viruses and swine hepatitis E virus varied between 46.9 to 48.1%. The most divergent isolate aHEV16050 showed homology of 82.6% as compared with the strains in the dendrogram. The three positive hepatitis E virus samples (aHEV16279, aHEV16050 and aHEV18196) did not cluster with the European genotype 3 as expected due to the close location of Russia to Europe, nor did they with the other two genotypes, separating to a distinct branch. The aHEV16211 grouped together with European and Chinese isolates, and the aHEV18198 with Canadian ones.