Federal University of Piauí, Picos, Brazil.
Laboratory of Leishmaniasis, Teresina, Brazil.
Sci Rep. 2016 Jul 20;6:29742. doi: 10.1038/srep29742.
Little is known about the feeding behavior of hematophagous insects that require plant sugar to complete their life cycles. We studied plant feeding of Lutzomyia longipalpis sand flies, known vectors of Leishmania infantum/chagasi parasites, in a Brazilian city endemic with visceral leishmaniasis. The DNA barcode technique was applied to identify plant food source of wild-caught L. longipalpis using specific primers for a locus from the chloroplast genome, ribulose diphosphate carboxylase. DNA from all trees or shrubs within a 100-meter radius from the trap were collected to build a barcode reference library. While plants from the Anacardiaceae and Meliaceae families were the most abundant at the sampling site (25.4% and 12.7% of the local plant population, respectively), DNA from these plant families was found in few flies; in contrast, despite its low abundance (2.9%), DNA from the Fabaceae family was detected in 94.7% of the sand flies. The proportion of sand flies testing positive for DNA from a given plant family was not significantly associated with abundance, distance from the trap, or average crown expansion of plants from that family. The data suggest that there may indeed be a feeding preference of L. longipalpis for plants in the Fabaceae family.
对于需要植物糖来完成生命周期的吸血昆虫的取食行为，人们知之甚少。我们研究了巴西一个内脏利什曼病流行地区，白蛉属长须白蛉吸血昆虫的植物取食行为，该种白蛉是利什曼原虫/恰加斯原虫寄生虫的已知载体。我们应用 DNA 条码技术，利用叶绿体基因组中核酮糖二磷酸羧化酶的特定引物来识别野生捕获的长须白蛉的植物食物来源。从陷阱 100 米范围内的所有树木或灌木中收集 DNA，以建立条码参考库。虽然在采样点，漆树科和楝科植物最为丰富（分别占当地植物种群的 25.4%和 12.7%），但这些植物科的 DNA 在很少的白蛉中发现；相比之下，尽管丰度较低（2.9%），但来自豆科的 DNA 在 94.7%的白蛉中被检测到。测试阳性的白蛉对特定植物科 DNA 的比例与该植物科的丰度、距陷阱的距离或该植物科植物平均树冠扩张均无显著相关性。数据表明，长须白蛉可能确实对豆科植物有取食偏好。
