Abstract
Little is known about the feeding behavior of hematophagous insects that require plant sugar to complete their life cycles. We studied plant feeding of Lutzomyia longipalpis sand flies, known vectors of Leishmania infantum/chagasi parasites, in a Brazilian city endemic with visceral leishmaniasis. The DNA barcode technique was applied to identify plant food source of wild-caught L. longipalpis using specific primers for a locus from the chloroplast genome, ribulose diphosphate carboxylase. DNA from all trees or shrubs within a 100-meter radius from the trap were collected to build a barcode reference library. While plants from the Anacardiaceae and Meliaceae families were the most abundant at the sampling site (25.4% and 12.7% of the local plant population, respectively), DNA from these plant families was found in few flies; in contrast, despite its low abundance (2.9%), DNA from the Fabaceae family was detected in 94.7% of the sand flies. The proportion of sand flies testing positive for DNA from a given plant family was not significantly associated with abundance, distance from the trap, or average crown expansion of plants from that family. The data suggest that there may indeed be a feeding preference of L. longipalpis for plants in the Fabaceae family.
Highlights
Sand flies require sugar as their energy source[10,11,12]
We used ribulose diphosphate carboxylase (rbcL) PCR to detect and identify plant DNA in the guts of 100 L. longipalpis captured during 5 days in the tropical urban environment of Teresina, Piauí State
This study verified the feasibility of detecting plant DNA in the digestive tracts of L. longipalpis using a barcode approach
Summary
Sand flies require sugar as their energy source[10,11,12]. there is little information about specific sources of these sugars and about how sand flies are attracted to plants, especially under natural conditions[7,13]. The ribulose diphosphate carboxylase (rbcL) gene has been successfully used to identify food source[14,20,21] This same locus was used by Junnila et al.[22] to identify plant-derived food content in wild-caught Phlebotomus papatasi sand flies. The DNA barcode approach can be used to identify relationships between presence of plant types and vectorial capacity or the likelihood of vector habitats in a particular area. One application of this technique, would be informing vector control measures, such as urban landscaping techniques, for leishmaniasis and other vectorborne diseases. We describe a study designed to identify plant-based feeding preferences of L. longipalpis through the use of DNA barcode technology in a Brazilian city where visceral leishmaniasis is endemic
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