Virulence and transmission vary between Usutu virus lineages in Culex pipiens.

Usutu virus (USUV) is a zoonotic arbovirus infecting mainly wild birds. It is transmitted by ornithophilic mosquitoes, mainly of the genus Culex from birds to birds and to several vertebrate dead-end hosts. Several USUV lineages, differing in their virulence have emerged in the last decade and now co-circulate in Europe, impacting human populations. However, their relative transmission and effects on their mosquito vectors is still not known. We thus compared the vector competence and survival of Culex pipiens mosquitoes experimentally infected with two distinct USUV lineages, EU2 and EU3, that are known to differ in their virulence and replication in vertebrate hosts. Infection rate was variable among blood feeding assays but variations between EU2 and EU3 lineages were consistent suggesting that Culex pipiens was equally susceptible to infection by both lineages. However, EU3 viral load increased with viral titer in the blood meal while EU2 viral load was high at all titers which suggest a greater replication of EU2 than EU3 in mosquito. While their relative transmission efficiencies are similar, at least at low blood meal titer, positive correlation between transmission and blood meal titer was observed for EU3 only. Contrary to published results in vertebrates, EU3 induced a higher mortality to mosquitoes (i.e. virulence) than EU2 whatever the blood meal titer. Therefore, we found evidence of lineage-specific differences in vectorial capacity and virulence to both the vector and vertebrate host which lead to balanced propagation of both viral lineages. These results highlight the need to decipher the interactions between vectors, vertebrate hosts, and the diversity of arbovirus lineages to fully understand transmission dynamics. Author summary: Usutu virus is a zoonotic arbovirus that emerged in the last decade in Europe, impacting wild bird and human populations. Several co-circulating USUV lineages differ in their virulence to vertebrate hosts but their relative transmission and effects on their mosquito vectors is still not known. We compared the vector competence and survival of Culex pipiens mosquitoes experimentally infected with two distinct USUV lineages. We showed that their relative transmission efficiencies are similar but EU3 was more virulent to mosquitoes than EU2. In addition to published results, we revealed lineage-specific differences in vectorial capacity and virulence to both the vector and the vertebrate host suggesting that propagation of both viral lineages might be balanced. Our study provides new insights into the transmission of an emerging arbovirus and highlights the need to investigate the interactions between vectors, vertebrate hosts, and the diversity of arbovirus lineages to fully understand transmission dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]