Abstract
Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is a transboundary viral disease of cattle with substantial economic impact. Conventional surveillance strategies rely primarily on host-based sampling and clinical observation, which may be logistically constrained or insufficient during early or post-clinical phases of outbreaks. In this study, we used synanthropic flies as environmental micro-samplers to investigate temporal dynamics of LSDV under real-world outbreak conditions. Systematic fly collections were conducted at a confirmed LSDV-positive cattle farm during an active outbreak, followed by molecular screening and targeted sequencing. Both non-blood-feeding and opportunistic blood-feeding fly species, including Musca domestica and Hydrotaea spp., were analyzed to assess the presence of LSDV nucleic acids across multiple sampling periods. LSDV nucleic acids were detected in synanthropic flies, with temporal variation corresponding to the implementation of outbreak control measures. Viral signals declined over successive sampling rounds, indicating that insect-derived sampling reflects changes in environmental viral loads following intervention. Phylogenetic analysis of partial GPCR gene sequences revealed close genetic relationships between viruses detected in insect and cattle specimens, while also capturing minor sequence variation within a single outbreak setting. These findings support the concept that synanthropic flies can serve as environmental sentinels for monitoring pathogen persistence and diversity without direct animal sampling. Overall, insect-derived environmental sampling using synanthropic flies provides a non-invasive approach for capturing temporal patterns of LSDV under outbreak conditions.
Abbreviations
- LSD:
Lumpy skin disease
- LSDV:
Lumpy skin disease virus
- WOAH:
The World Organization for Animal Health
- OIE:
The Office International des Epizooties
- VRI:
Veterinary Research Institute
- PCR:
Polymerase chain reaction
- GPCR:
The G-protein coupled chemokine receptor
- RPO30:
An RNA polymerase subunit
- qPCR:
Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Dr. Yan-Chang Tu from VRI for his assistance, and Kinmen Country Animal and Plant Disease Control Center for collecting clinical specimens from cattle. We also appreciate the support of Dr. Lu-Jen Ting for the early work relating to insect specimen analysis in the present study.
Funding
This paper was supported by grants given to W. T. Liu by Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency, Ministry of Agriculture, Taiwan (113AS-5.5.2-VP-01).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Supplementary Material 1 (download DOCX )
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chuang, YC., Hu, SC., Tu, WC. et al. Insect-derived environmental surveillance of lumpy skin disease virus using synanthropic flies.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-68488-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-68488-5
Keywords
- Xenodiagnosis
- Insect-based environmental surveillance
- Lumpy skin disease
- Synanthropic fly
Musca domestica
Hydrotaea
Source: Ecology - nature.com
