Molecular epidemiology of Vibrio nigripulchritudo, a pathogen of cultured penaeid shrimp (Litopenaeus stylirostris) in New Caledonia.

A collection of 57 isolates of Vibrio nigripulchritudo from either diseased or healthy shrimp and from shrimp farms environment was studied in order to gain a better understanding of the epidemiology of this pathogen, notably isolated from two distinct shrimp disease complexes. Molecular typing using two different techniques, arbitrarily primed PCR (AP-PCR) and multi-locus sequence typing (MLST), studied together with experimental pathology data allowed a relevant epidemiological insight into this possibly emerging pathogen. Additionally, results obtained with the two molecular typing techniques were congruent and allowed discriminating the strains associated with the "Summer Syndrome" from strains isolated from other contexts, especially the other shrimp vibriosis "Syndrome 93". These results highlight that the "Summer Syndrome" is most probably caused by an emergent clonal pathogen that therefore deserves surveillance and that AP-PCR can satisfactorily be used for that purpose.