Insect dejections are potential sources of novel strains for controlled bakery productions.

Insects are efficient vectors of bacteria and in the hospital environment may have a role in spreading nosocomial infections. This study sampled the flying insect populations of seven hospitals in the United Kingdom and characterized the associated culturome of Diptera, including the antibiotic resistance profile of bacterial isolates. Flying insects were collected in seven U.K. hospitals between the period March 2010 to August 2011. The bacteria carried by Diptera were isolated using culture-based techniques, identified and characterized by antimicrobial susceptibility testing. A total of 19,937 individual insects were collected with Diptera being the most abundant (73.6% of the total), followed by Hemiptera (13.9%), Hymenoptera (4.7%), Lepidoptera (2.9%), and Coleoptera (2%). From Diptera, 82 bacterial strains were identified. The majority of bacteria belonged to the Enterobacteriaceae (42%), followed by Bacillus spp. (24%) and Staphylococcus spp. (19%). Less abundant were bacteria of the genus Clostridium (6%), Streptococcus (5%), and Micrococcus (2%). A total of 68 bacterial strains were characterized for their antibiotic resistance profile; 52.9% demonstrated a resistant phenotype to at least one class of antibiotic. Staphylococcus spp. represented the highest proportion of resistant strains (83.3%), followed by Bacillus spp. (60%) and Enterobacteriaceae (31.3%). Diptera were the predominant flying insects present in the U.K. hospital environments sampled and found to harbor a variety of opportunistic human pathogens with associated antimicrobial resistance profiles. Given the ability of flies to act as mechanical vectors of bacteria, they present a potential to contribute to persistence and spread of antimicrobial-resistant pathogenic bacteria in the hospital environment.

Synanthropic invasive silverfish, Ctenolepisma longicaudatum, has been recently reported to cause nuisance in the indoor environment in many European countries. To get more details on the species distribution, the species occurrence was monitored by the authors in the countries where establishment of C. longicaudatum has been revealed in the last years. In Czechia, 20 findings from 14 municipalities in eight regions were recorded within the last three years. In the United Kingdom, 49 cases, including the first occurrence in Scotland, were recorded. Five cases were recorded for the Republic of Ireland. Domestic settings were the main habitat in the study countries (50.0% for the Czechia and Ireland and 36.8% for the United Kingdom). Regarding C. longicaudatum control, the standard silverfish strategy fails, and the use of insecticidal baits complemented by dust insecticides was suggested as the most promising approach. To reveal presence of C. longicaudatum in Europe, the search of literature, social platforms and databases on invasive species was conducted. According to these sources, the species is known from majority of European countries, when the high increase of records in recent decade was detected.

Arthropods are recognised as potential mechanical and biological vectors for infectious diseases in outdoor environments. However, a comprehensive understanding of the indoor arthropod community diversity and of the role that their associated microbiota may have as disease vectors is largely unexplored. Here, we study the arthropod community and the associated microbiota diversity of twenty indoor environments, sampled over a period of twelve months from urban and suburban households by citizen scientists in the West Midlands (UK). We compare the arthropods diversity between environments and over the sampling months. We characterize the exogenous (exoskeleton) and endogenous (gut) bacterial communities associated with all specimens of arthropods actively captured using both a traditional culture-based and an unbiased metabarcoding approach. For the first time, we describe the exogenous and endogenous microbiota composition and diversity of 14 arthropod families found in indoor environments. We find that both the exogenous and the endogenous microbiota are potential carriers of human opportunistic pathogens, with potential implications for public health. We discover that many bacteria families are shared across the exogenous microbiota of arthropods, likely influenced by the bacteria present in the environment. Conversely, the endogenous microbiota composition is unique to the arthropod families, and likely genetically determined. We show that the metabarcoding unbiased approach is a superior tool to characterize the microbiota associated with each arthropod family. This study provides new insights into bacterial carriage in household arthropods as potential reservoirs of infectious disease.