Fitness Cost of Litomosoides sigmodontis Filarial Infection in Mite Vectors; Implications of Infected Haematophagous Arthropod Excretory Products in Host-Vector Interactions
Figure 2
Kinetics of blood-feeding and rate of L. sigmodontis infection in mites. One-week starved adult mites () were allowed to feed on either an infected jird or an uninfected jird; 12 days later, that is, when larvae are L3 in mites, smaller groups of these mites were allowed to take blood on an ICR uninfected mouse for various lengths of time (1.5 h, 6 h, or 12 h). (a) Kinetics of blood-feeding in mites: for each time point, 10 uninfected (Uninf.) or 10 infected (Inf.) mites were blood-fed on ICR mice. The number of effective blood-fed mites (fed) was evaluated in each group. The experiment was repeated 6 times and pooled. Infection status and time effects were not significant (two-way analysis of variance). Results are expressed as mean ± SEM. (b) Rate of L3 infection in mites: for each time point, 10 mites from the group fed on infected jirds were blood-fed on ICR mice, and then fed and unfed mites were separated. Each individual mite was necropsied and the L3 were searched for and isolated. The experiment was repeated 6 times and the data were pooled. Feeding status was significant (two-way analysis of variance). A time effect was significant neither in “unfed” nor in “fed” group (Bonferroni’s multiple comparison test). Results are expressed as mean ± SEM.
