Why do biting horseflies prefer warmer hosts? tabanids can escape easier from warmer targets

Abstract

Blood-sucking horseflies (tabanids) prefer warmer (sunlit, darker) host animals and generally attack them in sunshine, the reason for which was unknown until now. Recently, it was hypothesized that blood-seeking female tabanids prefer elevated temperatures, because their wing muscles are quicker and their nervous system functions better at a warmer body temperature brought about by warmer microclimate, and thus they can more successfully avoid the host’s parasite-repelling reactions by prompt takeoffs. To test this hypothesis, we studied in field experiments the success rate of escape reactions of tabanids that landed on black targets as a function of the target temperature, and measured the surface temperature of differently coloured horses with thermography. We found that the escape success of tabanids decreased with decreasing target temperature, that is escape success is driven by temperature. Our results explain the behaviour of biting horseflies that they prefer warmer hosts against colder ones. Since in sunshine the darker the host the warmer its body surface, our results also explain why horseflies prefer sunlit dark (brown, black) hosts against bright (beige, white) ones, and why these parasites attack their hosts usually in sunshine, rather than under shaded conditions.