Dataset Information

How do Nutritional Stress and La Crosse Virus Infection Interact? Tests for Effects on Willingness to Blood Feed and Fecundity in Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae).

ABSTRACT: Evolutionary theory predicts that vector-borne pathogens should have low virulence for their vector because of selection against pathogens that harm the vector sufficiently to reduce transmission. Environmental factors such as nutritional stress can alter vector-pathogen associations by making the vectors more susceptible to pathogens (condition-dependent competence) and vulnerable to the harm caused by pathogen replication (condition-dependent virulence). We tested the hypotheses of condition-dependent competence and condition-dependent virulence by examining the interactive effects of short-term sugar deprivation and exposure to La Crosse virus (LACV) in female Aedes albopictus (Skuse). We predicted that infection status interacts with sugar deprivation to alter willingness to blood feed and fecundity in the second gonotrophic cycle (condition-dependent virulence). Sugar deprivation had no effect on body infection or disseminated infection rates. Infection status, sugar treatment, and their interaction had no effect on fecundity. Mosquitoes that had intermittent access to sugar were significantly more willing to take a second bloodmeal compared with those that had continuous access to sugar. Infection status and the interaction with sugar treatment had no effect on blood-feeding behavior. Thus, we found no evidence of short-term sugar deprivation leading to condition-dependent competence for, or condition-dependent virulence of, LACV in Ae. albopictus.

SUBMITTER: Westby KM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4723681 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

How do Nutritional Stress and La Crosse Virus Infection Interact? Tests for Effects on Willingness to Blood Feed and Fecundity in Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae).

Westby Katie M KM Muturi Ephantus J EJ Juliano Steven A SA

Journal of medical entomology 20151017 1

Evolutionary theory predicts that vector-borne pathogens should have low virulence for their vector because of selection against pathogens that harm the vector sufficiently to reduce transmission. Environmental factors such as nutritional stress can alter vector-pathogen associations by making the vectors more susceptible to pathogens (condition-dependent competence) and vulnerable to the harm caused by pathogen replication (condition-dependent virulence). We tested the hypotheses of condition-d ...[more]

PMID: 26477049

Similar Datasets

Project description:Population growth models are integral to ecological studies by providing estimates of population performance across space and time. Several models have been developed that estimate population growth through correlates of demographic traits, as measuring each parameter of the model can be prohibitive in experimental studies. Since differences in female size can accurately reflect changes in fecundity for many taxa, Livdahl and Sugihara developed a population growth index that incorporates size-fecundity relationships as a proxy for fecundity. To investigate the extent to which this model is robust to variation of this proxy, we tested if genetic (source population), temperature and resource treatments affect the size-fecundity relationship in Aedes albopictus (Skuse), the Asian tiger mosquito. We then determined if variation in the size-fecundity relationship alters the population growth estimates, lambda (?'), when applied to Livdahl and Sugihara's model. We performed 2 laboratory experiments in which we reared cohorts of four different geographic populations of A. albopictus across 5 temperature treatments (18, 21, 25, 18, 31°C) and three resource treatments (low, medium, high larval resources). We determined if the slope of the size-fecundity relationship varied by source population, temperature, or resource; and if variation in this relationship affects lambda (?') estimates in a competition study between A. albopictus and Culex pipiens (Linnaeus), the northern house mosquito. Temperature treatments significantly affected the size-fecundity relationship, resource level marginally affected the relationship, while source population had no effect. We found positive relationships between size and fecundity when mosquito larvae were reared at high temperatures and low resource levels but the relationship disappeared when mosquitoes were reared at a low temperature or with high levels of resources. The variation in the size-fecundity relationship produced from different temperatures resulted in statistically different lambda (?') estimates. However, these changes in lambda (?') did not alter the trends in the population performance across treatments or conclusions of the competition study. This study provides evidence that the population growth model is sensitive to variation in size-fecundity relationships and we recommend biologists apply the most compatible size-fecundity relationship to the models to obtain the most accurate estimates of population performance.

Dataset Information

How do Nutritional Stress and La Crosse Virus Infection Interact? Tests for Effects on Willingness to Blood Feed and Fecundity in Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae).

Publications

How do Nutritional Stress and La Crosse Virus Infection Interact? Tests for Effects on Willingness to Blood Feed and Fecundity in Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae).

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets