Superinfection Exclusion in Neotropical Honey Bees May Block DWV-B, an Emerging Infectious Disease Variant of Deformed Wing Virus

Abstract

RNA viruses often comprise multiple variants that co-circulate in a host population, with potentially complex dynamics. Deformed wing virus (DWV), arguably the most impactful virus of honey bees (Apis mellifera), nowadays exists as two major variants, genotypes A (DWV-A) and B (DWV-B), which provide an amenable window into the dynamics of multi-variant pathogens. DWV-B has increased in prevalence over the past two decades in honey bees in Europe, largely replacing DWV-A. DWV-B arrived over a decade ago in the New World, where its prevalence has also increased markedly in temperate North American honey bees. The Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico is home to a high density of both managed and feral Africanized honey bees (AHBs), which are also known to be infected by DWV, though variant dynamics in this tropical location have not been explored. Here, we present two temporally separated datasets on viral prevalence that demonstrate the presence of both DWV genotypes in Yucatecan AHBs in 2010, though with surprisingly little change in the high prevalence of DWV-A and low prevalence of DWV-B through to 2019. Epidemiological modeling suggests that the dynamics of DWV genotypes in AHBs of Yucatan may be due to a form of superinfection exclusion (SIE). We model one potential form of SIE, inter-genotype recombination meltdown. In addition to providing information on the epidemiology of a major honey bee virus in the Neotropics, our results provide broader insight into the evolutionary dynamics of viruses that comprise two or more co-occurring variants.