DNA polymerase gene sequences indicate western and forest tent caterpillar viruses form a new taxonomic group within baculoviruses.

Baculoviruses infect larval lepidopterans, and thus have potential value as microbial controls of agricultural and forest pests. Understanding their genetic relatedness and host specificity is relevant to the risk assessment of viral insecticides if non-target impacts are to be avoided. DNA polymerase gene sequences have been demonstrated to be useful for inferring genetic relatedness among dsDNA viruses. We have adopted this approach to examine the relatedness among natural isolates of two uncharacterized caterpillar-infecting baculoviruses, Malacosoma californicum pluviale nucleopolyhedrovirus (McplMNPV) and Malacosoma disstria nucleopolyhedrovirus (MadiMNPV), which infect two closely related host species with little to no cross-infectivity. We designed two degenerate primers (BVP1 and BVP2) based on protein motifs conserved among baculoviruses. McplMNPV and MadiMNPV viral DNA was obtained from naturally infected caterpillars collected from geographically distinct sites in the Southern Gulf Islands and Prince George regions of British Columbia, Canada. Sequencing of 0.9 kb PCR amplicons from six McplMNPV and six MadiMNPV isolates obtained from a total of eight sites, revealed very low nucleotide variation among McplMNPV isolates (99.2-100% nucleotide identity) and among MadiMNPV isolates (98.9-100% nucleotide identity). Greater nucleotide variation was observed between viral isolates from the two different caterpillar species (only 84.7-86.1% nucleotide identity). Both maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses support placement of McplMNPV and MadiMNPV in a clade that is distinct from other groups of baculoviruses.