Experimental infection studies of UK Culicoides species midges with bluetongue virus serotypes 8 and 9

This paper describes a rapid, standardised method for testing the susceptibility to bluetongue virus (btv) of northern Palaearctic Culicoides species midges that can be used to assess the competence of both field-caught and laboratory-infected midges. The method has been used to show that Culicoides scoticus can replicate btv serotype 8 and btv serotype 9 strains to more than 3 log 10 tcid50/midge, the first evidence of the potential of this species to transmit btv.