Quantitative and Qualitative Costs of Autogeny in Phlebotomus papatasi (Diptera: Psychodidae) Sand Flies.

ABSTRACT: Most sand flies and mosquitoes require a bloodmeal for egg production, but when blood-sources are scarce, some of them can reproduce without it, so called facultative autogeny. The evolution of autogenous reproduction is thought to involve a trade-off between the benefit of reproducing in the absence of bloodmeal hosts versus the quantitative cost of reduced fecundity and/or or qualitative effect on reduced offspring development and survivorship. We blood-fed (BF) some Phlebotomous papatasi (Scopoli) sand fly females on mice while keeping others (from the same cohort) not BF. We then compared the fecundity of BF and non-blood-fed (NBF) females and also evaluated their egg mass and hatching rate, larval development rate and survivorship, pupa mass and eclosion rates, and progeny fecundity.

SUBMITTER: Shymanovich T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7768683 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature