Novel viral diversity and geographic structuring in the New Zealand West Coast blackfly (Austrosimulium ungulatum)

Metatranscriptomic sequencing of 425 West Coast blackflies (Austrosimulium ungulatum) from 19 locations revealed 94 putatively novel viral sequences spanning 16 orders and six phyla.

• Why it matters: Vector distributions are shifting with climate and land-use change, but the virome of this endemic, human-biting blackfly in Aotearoa New Zealand is largely unknown.
• What they did: Researchers sequenced blackfly viromes and compared viral diversity and community composition across geographical and environmental gradients spanning ~187 km, testing land-use categories and distance effects.
• The result: Viral community composition differed by sampling location, land-use categories showed no significant links to diversity or composition, and geographical distance was weakly but significantly positively correlated with viral dissimilarity.

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