A community-level view of Wolbachia DNA positivity across mosquito assemblages in eastern China
6 affiliations
- 1Huai'an Center for Disease Control and Prevention
- 2School of Public Health, Xuzhou Medical University
- 3Wuxi Shuofang Subdistrict Community Health Service Center
- 4Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps
- 5Xuyi County Center for Disease Control and Prevention
- 6Clinical Research Center, The Affiliated Children's Hospital of Jiangnan University
Abstract
Wolbachia is a widespread mosquito-associated endosymbiont with important implications for vector biology and microbial ecology. However, field studies often examine Wolbachia within individual mosquito species, which can obscure how host community structure shapes the microbial signal observed at a sampling site. Here, we analyzed Wolbachia DNA positivity in a taxonomically curated collection of 2,434 mosquitoes from Huai'an, Lu'an, and Xuzhou in eastern China. The dataset comprised nine mosquito taxa and was used to link site-level mosquito community composition with taxon-resolved Wolbachia screening. Wolbachia DNA was detected in 419 mosquitoes, giving an overall positivity rate of 17.2%. Positivity was highly uneven across both taxa and sites. Five taxa, Culex pipiens, Anopheles sinensis, Culex tritaeniorhynchus, Armigeres subalbatus , and Aedes albopictus , accounted for 98.6% of all specimens, but most Wolbachia -positive mosquitoes were concentrated in Cx. pipiens, Ar. subalbatus , and Ae. albopictus . By contrast, An. sinensis and Cx. tritaeniorhynchus were rarely positive. Site-level positivity ranged from 11.3% in Huai'an to 60.8% in Lu'an and 90.0% in Xuzhou. These differences reflected strong variation in local mosquito assemblages, including the dominance of Ar. subalbatus in Xuzhou, rather than a simple geographic gradient. Taxa sampled across multiple sites also showed taxon-specific locality-associated heterogeneity, especially Ae. albopictus and Ar. subalbatus . Our results demonstrate that Wolbachia surveillance in natural mosquito systems requires community-resolved analysis, because site-level positivity can be driven by host composition. This host-assemblage perspective provides a scalable framework for interpreting mosquito-associated endosymbionts across ecological settings and for prioritizing taxa for downstream strain-level and functional studies.
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BibTeX
@article{yang2026communitylevel,
title = {{A community-level view of Wolbachia DNA positivity across mosquito assemblages in eastern China}},
author = {Pengfei Yang and Wenyu Ni and Fang He and Qingli Yan and Zhumeng Ni and Xiaoming Peng and Tong Gao and Mengmeng Lv and Shuaidi Yang and Ru Zhang and Liang Liang and Wei Hu and Yan-Jun Kang},
journal = {Frontiers in Microbiology},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3389/fmicb.2026.1906293},
url = {https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2026.1906293/full},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - A community-level view of Wolbachia DNA positivity across mosquito assemblages in eastern China
AU - Pengfei Yang
AU - Wenyu Ni
AU - Fang He
AU - Qingli Yan
AU - Zhumeng Ni
AU - Xiaoming Peng
AU - Tong Gao
AU - Mengmeng Lv
AU - Shuaidi Yang
AU - Ru Zhang
AU - Liang Liang
AU - Wei Hu
AU - Yan-Jun Kang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
JO - Frontiers in Microbiology
DO - 10.3389/fmicb.2026.1906293
UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2026.1906293/full
AB - Wolbachia is a widespread mosquito-associated endosymbiont with important implications for vector biology and microbial ecology. However, field studies often examine Wolbachia within individual mosquito species, which can obscure how host community structure shapes the microbial signal observed at a sampling site. Here, we analyzed Wolbachia DNA positivity in a taxonomically curated collection of 2,434 mosquitoes from Huai'an, Lu'an, and Xuzhou in eastern China. The dataset comprised nine mosquito taxa and was used to link site-level mosquito community composition with taxon-resolved Wolbachia screening. Wolbachia DNA was detected in 419 mosquitoes, giving an overall positivity rate of 17.2%. Positivity was highly uneven across both taxa and sites. Five taxa, Culex pipiens, Anopheles sinensis, Culex tritaeniorhynchus, Armigeres subalbatus , and Aedes albopictus , accounted for 98.6% of all specimens, but most Wolbachia -positive mosquitoes were concentrated in Cx. pipiens, Ar. subalbatus , and Ae. albopictus . By contrast, An. sinensis and Cx. tritaeniorhynchus were rarely positive. Site-level positivity ranged from 11.3% in Huai'an to 60.8% in Lu'an and 90.0% in Xuzhou. These differences reflected strong variation in local mosquito assemblages, including the dominance of Ar. subalbatus in Xuzhou, rather than a simple geographic gradient. Taxa sampled across multiple sites also showed taxon-specific locality-associated heterogeneity, especially Ae. albopictus and Ar. subalbatus . Our results demonstrate that Wolbachia surveillance in natural mosquito systems requires community-resolved analysis, because site-level positivity can be driven by host composition. This host-assemblage perspective provides a scalable framework for interpreting mosquito-associated endosymbionts across ecological settings and for prioritizing taxa for downstream strain-level and functional studies.
SN - 1664-302X
ER -