Estimating the mean abundance and feeding rate of a temporal ectoparasite in the wild: Afrocimex constrictus (Heteroptera: Cimicidae)

Abstract

The feeding frequency of blood-feeding invertebrates in the wild is largely unknown but is an important predictor for the potential of disease transmission and for estimating the effects blood feeding may have on the host population. We present a method to estimate the mean feeding frequency per individual parasite from the frequency distribution of fed and unfed individuals in the wild. We used three populations of the cimicid species, Afrocimex constrictus, that parasitises the fruit bat Rousettus aegyptiacus. We found that the area occupied by a bug refugium was a good predictor of the number of bugs in that refugia. The estimated parasite population sizes ranged from ca. 25,000 to 3 million bugs. Their mean abundance was 1–15 bugs per host individual. Preventing feeding by bugs in their natural habitat showed that bugs took approximately 20 days to return to an unfed stage. A formula is presented by which the distribution of digestion stages in the samples was used to calculate that A. constrictus feeds approximately every 7–10 days. The dry weight of a full blood meal was approximated as 13.3mg. Therefore A. constrictus is estimated to draw an average of 1–28μL blood per host per day. We suggest that any of our methods can be adjusted to be used in other haematophagous insects to estimate host and parasite population size, mean parasite abundance and blood meal size as well as mean feeding frequency in the wild, including the bed bug species that parasitise humans.