Presence of OIE ?Notifiable viral pathogens in crustaceans from Argentina.

MARTORELLI, SERGIO R.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 45th. Annual Meeting of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology- International Congress on Invertebrate Pathology; 2012

Society for Invertebrate Pathology

Since 2003 two of the most important commercially caught shrimp in Argentina (the Argentine stiletto shrimp, Artemesia longinaris, and the Pink shrimp Pleoticus muelleri) together with another crustaceans of ecological interest were examined for parasites, epibionts and pathogens. In 2008 several specimens of the penaeid shrimp A. longinaris from the Bahia Blanca estuary were found with numerous black spot in the cephalothorax shell. In some of these specimens histological sections stained whit H&E showed the presence of inclusion bodies type Crowdy A, coincident normally with infections of the White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV). In a first molecular study, using a commercial WSSV kit, two specimens were found positives for this virus. To confirm and double check the presence of this virus in A longinaris and in other two crustaceans, that were found also with spots in their cuticles (the grapsoid crab Cyrtograpsus angulatus, and the introduced shrimp Palaemon macrodactylus), several specimens of each of these three species were analized in collaboration with Dr. Overstreet in the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory (USA). In this study three PCR methods and qPCR were used. Of all the samples 56% of A longinaris, 67% of C. angulatus and 40% of P macrodactylus were positive for WSSV. in addition 30% of A longinais was also positive for IHHNV. Most of the WSSV positive crustacean has low copy numbers of the virus and some explanations for this finding are presented. Finally characteristics of this outbreak in wild crustacean are discussed with new data, and three possible routes of introduction of the virus in Argentina were analyzed.