Infection of Chorthippus loratus (Orthoptera: Acrididae) with Liebermannia sp. (Microsporidia) in South-Western Russia.

Chorthippus loratus collected in Krasnodar Territory in 2017 was infected at 15% rate with a microsporidium possessing ovocylindrical binucleate spores, 2.6 × 1.2 μm in size. SSU RNA gene typing (Genbank accession # MH396491) showed its allocation to the genus Liebermannia. Degenerate primers based upon largest subunit RNA polymerase II (RPB1) sequences of closest relatives allowed amplifying the respective gene fragment of Liebermannia sp. (# MH396492). The present finding indicates world-wide distribution of the Liebermannia genus and parasitism in hosts with non-overlapping geographic ranges (representing Neotropical versus Palearctic fauna), while previous observations were restricted to Acridoidea endemic for South America. Keywords: Microsporidia; Acrididae; prevalence rate; light microscopy; molecular phylogenetics MICROSPORIDIA are parasitic unicellular eukaryotes widely occurring in animals. Over 1300 species belonging to more than 200 genera are described. And though insects, alongside with crustaceans and fishes, harbor the vast majority of described species, known biodiversity of microsporidia from the order Orthoptera is comparatively low. In fact, as summarized by Sokolova et al. (2006) in a paper describing a new genus and a new species Liebermannia patagonica from Tristira magellanica (Acridoidea, Tristiridae), only 18 microsporidia species or undefined isolates were registered worldwide in orthopteran insects, which is by an order of magnitude lower as compared to other insect orders such as Diptera, Coleoptera or Lepidoptera. Since then, only three new species were described from Orthoptera, namely Liebermannia covasacrae (Sokolova et al. 2009) from Covasacris pallidinota, (Acridoidea, Acrididae), Encephalitozoon romalae (Lange et al. 2009) from Romalea microptera (Acridoidea, Romaleidae) and Endoreticulatus poecilimonae (Pilarska et al. 2015) from Poecilimon thoracicus (Tettigonoidea, Tettigoniidae), and one species, Perezia dichroplusae from Dichroplus elongatus (Acridoidea, Acrididae), was redefined as Liebermannia dichroplusae (Sokolova et al. 2007). In the present paper, we describe a case of infection of a grasshopper population with a microsporidium belonging to the genus Liebermannia, which is found for the first time in Eurasia. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.