Abstract
Agar double diffusion tests were used to analyze the origin of blood meals from 720 Triatoma infestans bugs collected from bedrooms and peridomestic structures of 9 households near Guanaco Muerto in the Province of Cordoba, Argentina. The intestinal contents of 332 (46.1%) of the bugs reacted to 1 or more of 11 antisera tested. Dog was the most frequently identified host in bugs collected from bedrooms (48.9%), followed by chicken (34.8%) and man (11.9%). A significantly higher number of blood meals from dogs were identified in nymphs than in adults. A predominance of identified feedings from goat (43.8%) and chicken (33.3%) were found in bugs from peridomestic structures. Movement of T. infestans between domestic and peridomestic structures is apparently minimal, since identified blood meals in bugs from bedrooms included only 1.8% from wild cavies, 0.4% from goats and 0.4% from horses, while only 3.3% of the total identified feedings from peridomestically collected bugs were from man. Since only a small number of bugs collected from goat pens and chicken houses contained blood meals from opossum (1.9%) and rodents (4.5%), these animals were considered to be of little importance in the maintenance of domestic populations of T. infestans . The highest rates of infection with Trypanosoma cruzi were found in bugs from bedrooms (63.6%). Peridomestically collected bugs from storerooms, chicken houses and goat pens showed significantly lower rates of infection (25, 2.4 and 1.4%, respectively). In bugs collected from bedrooms, a high correlation occurred between identified feedings from dogs and the rate of infection with T. cruzi . Dogs were considered the most important host, both as a reservoir source of T. cruzi and in the maintenance of domiciliary T. infestans in the study area.
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