Wolbachia infection and mitochondrial DNA comparisons among Culex mosquitoes in South West Iran.

The control of mosquito borne diseases needs new methods given widespread insecticide resistance in many mosquito species. The inherited endosymbiont Wolbachia, found in many arthropods, provides a biological system to reduce the transmission of these diseases and replace the population of vectors with non-vectors using cytoplasmic incompatibility. The aim of this study was to understand the rate of Wolbachia infection among Culex species in the region and to see the effect of Wolbachia infection on mitochondrial genome. In this study three species of Culex mosquitoes were collected from Shoushtar in south west of Iran and examined for Wolbachia infection by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). All of the C. quinquefasciatus specimens were infected with Wolbachia, while C. tritaeniorynchus and C. theileri showed no infection with Wolbachia. The 340 bp of AT rich of mtDNA was sequenced from 30 individuals, 10 individuals of each species. Three sequence haplotypes were found in C. tritaeniorynchus and C. theileri while there was only one haplotype in C. quinquefasciatus. The reduction of haplotypes diversity may be result of a sweep of Wolbachia in this species.