San-Blas Ernesto, Gowen Simon R
School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading RG6 6AR, UK.
Int J Parasitol. 2008 Jan;38(1):85-91. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpara.2007.06.003. Epub 2007 Jun 27.
Entomopathogenic nematodes cannot be considered only as parasitic organisms. With dead Galleria mellonella larvae, we demonstrated that these nematodes use scavenging as an alternative survival strategy. We consider scavenging as the ability of entomopathogenic nematodes to penetrate, develop and produce offspring in insects which have been killed by causes other than the nematode-bacteria complex. Six Steinernema and two Heterorhabditis species scavenged but there were differences among them in terms of frequency of colonisation and in the time after death of G. mellonella larvae that cadavers were penetrated. The extremes of this behaviour were represented by Steinernema glaseri which was able to colonise cadavers which had been freeze-killed 240 h earlier and Heterorhabditis indica which only colonised cadavers which had been killed up to 72 h earlier. Also, using an olfactometer, we demonstrated that entomopathogenic nematodes were attracted to G. mellonella cadavers.
昆虫病原线虫不能仅仅被视为寄生生物。我们以死亡的大蜡螟幼虫为研究对象，证明了这些线虫会利用食腐行为作为一种替代生存策略。我们将食腐行为定义为昆虫病原线虫在被线虫 - 细菌复合体以外的其他原因致死的昆虫体内穿透、发育并产生后代的能力。六种斯氏线虫属和两种异小杆线虫属的线虫具有食腐行为，但它们在定殖频率以及大蜡螟幼虫死亡后尸体被穿透的时间方面存在差异。这种行为的极端表现分别为：glaseri斯氏线虫能够定殖在提前240小时被冷冻致死的尸体上，而印度异小杆线虫仅能定殖在提前至多72小时被杀死的尸体上。此外，我们使用嗅觉计证明了昆虫病原线虫会被大蜡螟尸体所吸引。
