Species of sand flies (Diptera: Psychodidae) collected from natural reserves in the Pacific and Darien regions of Colombia.

Introduction: The departments of Chocó and Antioquia in Colombia show climatic and vegetation conditions favoring the establishment of vector species of the genus Lutzomyia and the transmission of Leishmania spp. to human populations entering conserved forest environments.

Objective: To report the species of Phlebotomine sandflies present in three natural reserves in the Darien and Pacific regions of Colombia.

[Phylogenetic signal at the Cytb-SertRNA-IG1-ND1 mitochondrial region in Anopheles (Kerteszia) neivai Howard, Dyar & Knab, 1913].

Introduction: Mitochondrial DNA has proven its utility for the study of insect evolution. Genes such as cytochrome b (Cytb) and the transfer gene for serine (SertRNA) can be used to compare closely related organisms.

Objective: The phylogenetic utility of Cytb-SertRNA-IG1-ND1 was tested for polymorphisms, and secondary structure modeling in SertRNA was done to detect possible cryptic species in Anopheles neivai.

Genetic characterization, molecular epidemiology, and phylogenetic relationships of insect-specific viruses in the taxon Negevirus.

The recently described taxon Negevirus is comprised of a diverse group of insect-specific viruses isolated from mosquitoes and phlebotomine sandflies. In this study, a comprehensive genetic characterization, molecular, epidemiological and evolutionary analyses were conducted on nearly full-length sequences of 91 new negevirus isolates obtained in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Panama, USA and Nepal. We demonstrated that these arthropod restricted viruses are clustered in two major phylogenetic groups with origins related to three plant virus genera (Cilevirus, Higrevirus and Blunevirus).