Effects of sand fly larval rearing medium conditioning and aging on the bacterial community structure and dynamics
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Nayma Romo Bechara (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Kasie Raymann
Abstract: An alternative approach for standard disease vector control is the use of attractants. For the last several years, Dr. Wasserberg and his team have been studying oviposition attractants of Phlebotomine sand flies, vectors of the Leishmaniases agents. They have discovered that gravid females are attracted and stimulated to lay eggs in larval conditioned media and that this attraction is driven by bacterial kairomones. They also recently found that larval media conditioned with sand fly larvae was more attractive than medium aged for the same amount of time in the absence of larvae. Furthermore, both attraction and oviposition responses were shown to increase in response to both aged and larval conditioned media when compared to fresh larval media. Here, I tested the hypothesis that larval conditioning and medium aging affect the microbial community in a manner that affects the oviposition behavior of sand flies. The specific goals were to: (1) Compare the bacterial community secondary succession dynamics between aged and larval conditioned media; (2) Determine the effects of larval and post larval stages on microbial community structure and composition. To address these aims, fresh larval food was sampled as a baseline and aged and conditioned media were sampled at four time points (weeks 2, 4, 6, and 9). All samples were collected and analyzed using 16S amplicon sequencing. A total of 42 taxa were identified. The bacterial communities of week-2 larval-conditioned and aged media differed significantly from the baseline fresh medium with no significant change thereafter. However, the communities did not differ between the conditioned and aged media types at each time point. When grouped into larval and post-larval stages and compared to the corresponding aged media of same time points, the bacterial communities changed for both media types when compared to the baseline. Additionally, the bacterial communities of both the larval and post-larval media differed significantly from the aged media at both corresponding time points, suggesting larval induced taxonomical divergence of the bacterial community.
Effects of sand fly larval rearing medium conditioning and aging on the bacterial community structure and dynamics
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Created on 8/1/2021
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2021
- Keywords
- Amplicon sequencing, Bacteria, Phlebotomus papatasi, Rearing substrate
- Subjects
- Phlebotomus papatasi
- Larvae $x Microbiology
- Bacterial communities