First record of ranavirus (Ranavirus sp.) in Siberia, Russia

By

Lisachov, Artem P.
Lisachova, Lada S.
Simonov, Evgeniy

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2022-2-7

Original Publication

Herpetozoa

Volume

35

Pages

33--37

Subjects

amphibian pathogens , Bufo , emergent diseases , qPCR , toad , West Siberia

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/herpetozoa.35.e79490

 

Abstract

Ranaviruses are a group of double-strand DNA viruses that infect fish, amphibians and reptiles. These viruses are responsible for mass fish and amphibian mortality events worldwide, both in the wild and at fish and amphibian farms. The number of detected epizootics has grown significantly in recent years. In Eastern Europe and Northern Asia, including Russia, very few ranavirus monitoring studies have been conducted, in contrast with Western Europe and America. In the present work, we used a qPCR assay to survey for the first time the amphibian populations of West Siberia (Russia) for the presence of ranaviruses. In total, we studied 252 tissue samples from six amphibian species, collected across West Siberia from the south to the Arctic regions. We report a single infected sample: a common toad (Bufo bufo) captured near Tyumen city. The phylogenetic analysis showed that the detected virus strain belongs to the CMTV lineage. This is only the second observation of Ranavirus in Russia.