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How can archive collections support

pandemic preparedness?

Dr. Yvonne-Marie Linton

Research Director

Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit

Curator, Entomology SI-NMNH

DIGIBIO September 23-24, 2021

Photo credit: Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit (WRBU)

Good morning everyone. My name is YML, I am the RD of WRBU and it is my very great pleasure to my talk “How can archive collections support pandemic preparedness?” here at DiGIBIO 2021.

Pandemic preparedness is reliant on real-time pathogen detection technologies and accurate pathogen /vector and host distribution in space and time, and together these key inputs drive successful pathogen mitigation strategies. Today, as never before, the World understands the devastating impact of zoonoses – where known (or novel) pathogens, normally restricted to wildlife spillover into humans with devastating consequences. With humans, livestock and wildlife sharing increasingly limited resources, the opportunity and severity of infectious and vector-borne diseases are increasing in severity and frequency and the ability to predict risk is critical to government, military and civilian health stakeholders alike. Here I am going to discuss a little about the historical role of the U.S. military in building the U.S. National Mosquito Collection in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, and the added value of digitizing our archive specimens in the fight against today’s global emerging infectious disease threats.

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Disclaimer: The opinions or assertions contained herein are the private views of the author, and are not to be construed as official, or as reflecting true views of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense.

The Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit (WRBU) is a unique national resource—a partnership between the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

We are a military unit, staffed almost entirely by civilians, and our mission is to conduct laboratory and field research on the systematics of medically important arthropod species- primarily transmitting diseases of importance to the military.

People often ask what a U.S. military unit is doing inside the Smithsonian. The historical entanglement of the US military with Museum entomologists started in with the tensions in SE Asia and the Pacific prior to the Vietnam War, where more US soldiers were dying of mosquito borne diseases than combat wounds. This relationship was incredibly fruitful and led to many large taxonomic monographs and many species described by military entomologists.

Here are some slides from our collection prepared by our name sake Dr. Walter Reed, a US Army captain, in Cuba, November 1900, when he and his team discovered that Aedes aegypti – then Stegomyia fasciatus – were responsible for the transmission of yellow fever.

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U.S. National Mosquito �Collection

1965: 200,000 specimens

2021: >1.7 million specimens

As part of our agreement with the Smithsonian, I serve as head curator of the U.S. National Mosquito Collection – and this is undoubtedly the jewel in our crown. In partnership with the Smithsonian Institution, WRBU has grown the U.S. National Mosquito Collection from 200,000 specimens in 1961, into the world’s largest taxonomically and geographically comprehensive collection of over 1.7 million specimens, representing over 65% of described mosquito taxa today. WRBU also manages eight other families including sand flies, horse flies, black flies, biting midges, bat flies. Our collections comprise immatures stages in ethanol and mounted on glass slides, as well as pinned (sometimes associated) adults.

Well-curated reference collections of arthropod vectors are of critical importance to solving modern vector-borne disease problems, and their intrinsic value increases as taxonomic resources decrease and modern technological advances improve accessibility to genetic information further adding value to the historic collections. We often lament that the most valuable aspect of any specimen is its label - having the specimen is one thing but having specimens with associated ecological data and time-stamped geolocality data is quite another.

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MAPPING

IDENTIFICATION

BIOLOGY

DISEASE RISK

One Health

Animal Health

Soldier Health

Entomological Intelligence

Effective vector-borne disease interventions rely high-quality, current information related to the correct identification, associated biology, and distribution of arthropod vectors.

WRBU undertakes cutting-edge research to package “entomological intelligence” into actionable tools and products that best assess local and regional risks of vector-borne disease caused by biting arthropods across the globe.

Core competencies –diagnose and describe vector species using morphology and DNA, undertake biosurveillance and vector incrimination, and to map and model spatio-temporal distributions.

To date, we have contributed DNA barcodes from over 72,000 mosquitos, and up to 10,000 tick, tabanid, Culicoides and sandflies. Our new look WRBU website (wrbu.si.edu) includes detailed species profiles complete with illustrated diagnostic characters, with updated country level distributions gleaned form the US National tick Collection, and verified published records. New additions are the expanded entries to include pathogen associations, and links to available DNA sequences for each taxa on GenBank.

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VectorMap�(wrbu.si.edu)

First established By Dr. Desmond Foley as a platform to visualize distribution data represented in the US National Collection

Now contains over 750,000 curated records, incl. all USNM Psychodidae (14,335 samples)

All points are manually curated for high accuracy – suitable for local, regional risk modelling

e.g., habitat suitability and Maximum Entropy

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1 Jan 2016 Ae. aegypti collection records

USNM Ae. aegypti collections

1 Jan 2017 Ae. aegypti collection records

VectorMap Data Summary: Aedes aegypti

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At WRBU we are cognizant that digitization of museum collections includes not only access to the locality data, but also the accessibility of genetic/genomic datasets to the wider community. Along with over 70,000 DNA barcode reference sequences for several families of biting Diptera, most recently we have successfully obtained over 300 whole mosquito genomes from our archive holdings using the Illumina NovaSeq, further increasing the value of archive collections. WRBU digitization efforts now include tracking distribution, identification, photographic e-vouchers, DNA barcodes and whole genome sequencing datasets.

Unlocking the key to genetic information information in our Collections allows the determination of the evolutionary history of mosquitoes – a key component of our understanding of the genetic mechanisms that govern the ability of select species to transmit pathogens of significance to human and animal health.

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Aedes vittatus in the New World

Data linking genetic signatures with geography are extremely powerful in global vector movement studies – thus that disease mitigation teams can identify the origin of point source introductions of invasive taxa and can implement control measures accordingly.

We recently detected the Old World Aedes vittatus – famed for its ability to transmit Yellow fever , dengue, chik and zika - for the first time in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and subsequently researchers in Cuba, confirmed additional populations across the island. At the time we finalized the submission – two sequences popped up in GenBank from the Dominican Republic, and it was clear that the species was already firmly established in the Caribbean – but where did it come from?. Using DNA COI barcodes, we were able to construct a robust network, showing evidence for two separate incursions into the New World – both from the Indian subcontinent.

The data-driven, actionable entomological intelligence tools and products developed by WRBU help to address the global taxonomic impediment and reflect our forward-facing vision to tackle tomorrow’s vector-borne disease threats, and preparing disease mitigation strategies for health decision makers.

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WRBU website [wrbu.si.edu]

VectorMap [vectormap.si.edu]

Disclaimer: Material has been reviewed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. There is no objection to its presentation and/or publication. The opinions or assertions contained herein are the private views of the author, and are not to be construed as official, or as reflecting true views of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense.