Abstract
Stable flies are blood-feeding insects with a great negative impact on animals world wide. Larvae develop primarily in animal manure and bacteria are essential for larval development; however, the principle of this dependence is not understood. We hypothesized that as the microbial community of animal manure changes over time, it plays an important role in stable fly fitness. Two-choice bioassays were conducted using 2 week old horse manure (control) and aging horse manure (fresh to 5 week old) to evaluate the effect of manure age on stable fly oviposition. Our data showed that fresh feces did not stimulate oviposition and that the attractiveness increased as manure aged but started to decline after 3 weeks. Bioassays assessing the effect of manure age at the time of oviposition on larval development demonstrated that 1–3 week old manure supported larval development significantly better than fresh, 4, and 5 week old manure. In addition, adult fitness (body size) was significantly higher in flies from 1 and 2 week old manure comparing to that of all other treatments. Analysis of the bacterial community of aging horse manure by 454-pyrosequencing of 16S rDNA revealed a great reduction in bacterial diversity and richness from fresh to 1–5 week old manure and a major shift from strict anaerobes in fresh manure to facultative anaerobes and strict aerobes in aged manure. Overall, the microbial community of 2 and 3 week old horse manure with its dominant bacterial taxa Rhizobium, Devosia, and Brevundimonas stimulated stable fly oviposition the most and provided a suitable habitat for larval development. These bacteria represent the candidates for studies focused on better understanding of stable fly – microbial interactions.
Highlights
Stable flies (Stomoxys calcitrans) are important cosmopolitan blood-feeding pests of confined and pastured livestock
The purpose of this study was to assess the changes in the bacterial community of aging horse manure and how that may be reflected in stable fly oviposition, larval development, and adult fitness
The role of semiochemicals and/or microbial community in oviposition has been shown for mosquitoes (Ponnusamy et al, 2008a,b), sand flies (Peterkova-Koci et al, 2012), house flies (Lam et al, 2007), stable flies (Romero et al, 2006; Jeanbourquin and Guerin, 2007), and screwworm flies (Chaudhury et al, 2002, Chaudhury et al, 2012; reviewed by Leroy et al, 2011; Davis et al, 2013)
Summary
Stable flies (Stomoxys calcitrans) are important cosmopolitan blood-feeding pests of confined and pastured livestock. Stable fly oviposition and larval development sites include various types of organic decomposing substrates but animal manure is most abundant and important (Meyer and Petersen, 1983; Axtell, 1986; Skoda et al, 1991). The age of cattle manure was shown to influence stable fly oviposition preference and high numbers of gravid females visiting manure that aged for at least 2 weeks were reported (Broce and Haas, 1999). Stable flies laid more eggs on horse manure with a complex bacterial community than on sterile manure and individual bacterial taxa such as Serratia fanticola and Citrobacter freundii isolated from horse manure stimulated stable fly oviposition and supported larval development significantly more than the sterile substrate
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