viruses Article Virus Prospecting in Crickets—Discovery and Strain Divergence of a Novel Iflavirus in Wild and Cultivated Acheta domesticus Joachim R. de Miranda 1,* , Fredrik Granberg 2 , Piero Onorati 1, Anna Jansson 3 and Åsa Berggren 1 1 Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 756 51 Uppsala, Sweden;
[email protected] (P.O.);
[email protected] (Å.B.) 2 Department of Biomedical Sciences and Veterinary Public Health, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 756 51 Uppsala, Sweden;
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[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +46-18-672437 Abstract: Orthopteran insects have high reproductive rates leading to boom-bust population dy- namics with high local densities that are ideal for short, episodic disease epidemics. Viruses are particularly well suited for such host population dynamics, due to their supreme ability to adapt to changing transmission criteria. However, very little is known about the viruses of Orthopteran insects. Since Orthopterans are increasingly reared commercially, for animal feed and human consumption, there is a risk that viruses naturally associated with these insects can adapt to commercial rearing conditions, and cause disease. We therefore explored the virome of the house cricket Acheta domesti- cus, which is both part of the natural Swedish landscape and reared commercially for the pet feed market. Only 1% of the faecal RNA and DNA from wild-caught A. domesticus consisted of viruses. Citation: de Miranda, J.R.; Granberg, These included both known and novel viruses associated with crickets/insects, their bacterial-fungal F.; Onorati, P.; Jansson, A.; Berggren, Å.