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The Biology of Plant-Mosquito Associations

Ebrahimi, Babak
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376907715

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Entomology.
Mosquitoes need plant sugar to maximize their activities. While males cannot survive without sugar, females performance increases in the presence of sugar. Mosquitoes use phytochemicals that are emitted by plants to find the source of sugar. To study mosquitoes’ behavior toward the phytochemicals, olfactometers have been used by researchers. Chapter 2 gives a description of three types of olfactometers that were designed and developed in the vector behavior laboratory at The Ohio State University, to evaluate attractiveness of phytochemicals. Milkweed and goldenrod flowers are attractive sources of sugar for Aedes vexans, Culex pipiens, and Cx. restuans in the Midwestern United States. In Chapter 3, attraction of the flowers of these two plants, their extracts, and the synthetic blend of milkweed were compared to unbaited and honey-baited traps. Flower-baited traps were more attractive to Ae. vexans and Culex spp. than traps with other baits. In Chapter 4, the possibility that Anopheles gambiae, a major African malaria vector, can learn plant odors and single phytochemicals, was explored in a mesocosm and an olfactometer. Results showed that associative olfactory learning depends on release rates of compounds during testing and conditioning. They also showed that when mosquitoes associated a compound with a sugar reward during conditioning, they were still highly attracted to it, even in the presence of a novel compound. The effect of sugar availability on vectorial capacity, including survival, biting rate, and fecundity was assessed in Chapter 5. Vectorial capacity was increased in a sugar-rich environment, unlike an earlier study, probably because mosquitoes had access to human blood for long period of time, allowing a higher biting rate. Fecundity was slightly decreased in the sugar-poor environment, probably because of a lower insemination rate in females, owing to rapid male die-off, and the females’ ability to use blood to provide energy. In addition to sugar availability, reproductive fitness of An. gambiae can be affected by rain. The experiments described in Chapter 6 showed that water agitation stimulates egg hatching, a first for this genus of mosquito. Eggs stored as long as a month hatched upon agitation. This characteristic has led to a new method of handling and colony maintenance in this species. Mosquitoes and other animals rely on many aspects of natural light in their lives, but artificial light generated by incandescent and fluorescent lamps and used in laboratory experiments contains a flicker component, a byproduct of alternating current. Insects can detect this flicker, and it may affect their responses to light-based behavior and development. A newly developed flicker-free dimmer for LEDs is described in Chapter 7. A low-pass filter has been placed between an Arduino microcontroller and a strip of LEDs to remove flicker. The microcontroller controls dimming duration.
Woodbidge A. Foster (Advisor)
P. Larry Phelan (Committee Member)
David L. Denglinger (Committee Member)
Peter M. Piermarini (Committee Member)
241 p.
Entomology
mosquito; plant sugar; olfactometer; learning; phytochemical; vectorial capacity; egg hatch; flickerless dimmer

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ebrahimi, B. (2013). The Biology of Plant-Mosquito Associations [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376907715

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ebrahimi, Babak. The Biology of Plant-Mosquito Associations. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376907715.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ebrahimi, Babak. "The Biology of Plant-Mosquito Associations." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1376907715

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1376907715
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.