Laboratório de Biologia Molecular de Insetos, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, FIOCRUZ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Department of Entomology and Nematology, Citrus Research and Education Center, University of Florida, Lake Alfred, FL, USA.
Parasit Vectors. 2018 Apr 18;11(1):254. doi: 10.1186/s13071-018-2635-9.
The study of physiological and behavioral traits of mosquito vectors has been of growing relevance for the proposition of alternative methods for controlling vector-borne diseases. Despite this, most studies focus on the female's traits, including the behavior of host seeking, the physiology of disease transmission and the site-choice for oviposition. However, understanding the factors that lead to males' reproductive success is of utmost importance, since it can help building new strategies for constraining population growth. Male behavior towards mating varies widely among species and the communication between males and females is the first aspect securing a successful encounter. Here we used an automated monitoring system to study the profile of locomotor activity of Aedes aegypti males in response to female's presence in an adapted confinement tube. We propose a new method to quantify male response to the presence of females, which can be potentially tested as an indicator of the success of one male in recognizing a female for mating.
Locomotor activity varies in daily cycles regulated by an endogenous clock and synchronized by external factors, such as light and temperature. Our results show the previously described startle response to light, which is displayed as a steep morning activity peak immediately when lights are on. Activity drops during the day and begins to rise again right before evening, happening about 1.5 h earlier in males than in females. Most interestingly, males' activity shows a double peak, and the second peak is very subtle when males are alone and relatively more pronounced when females are present in the confinement tubes. The switch in the peak of activity, measured by the herein suggested Peak Matching Index (PMI), was significantly different between males with and without females.
The adapted monitoring system used here allowed us to quantify the response of individual males to nearby females in terms of the extent of the activity peak displacement. In this direction, we created the peak matching index (PMI), a new parameter that we anticipate could be interpreted as the inclination of males to respond to females' presence, and further tested as an indicator of the potential for finding females for mating.
研究蚊虫媒介的生理和行为特征对于提出控制蚊媒疾病的替代方法越来越重要。尽管如此，大多数研究都集中在雌性的特征上，包括寻找宿主的行为、疾病传播的生理学以及产卵的场所选择。然而，了解导致雄性生殖成功的因素至关重要，因为这有助于构建新的策略来限制种群增长。雄性对交配的行为在物种间差异很大，雄性和雌性之间的交流是确保成功相遇的第一个方面。在这里，我们使用自动监测系统研究了埃及伊蚊雄性在适应的 confinement 管中对雌性存在的反应的运动活性特征。我们提出了一种量化雄性对雌性存在反应的新方法，该方法可作为衡量雄性识别雌性进行交配成功的潜在指标进行测试。
运动活性在由内源性时钟调节并由外部因素（如光照和温度）同步的日常周期中变化。我们的结果显示了先前描述的对光的惊跳反应，表现为光照立即开启时的陡峭早晨活性峰值。白天活动量下降，傍晚前再次开始上升，雄性比雌性早约 1.5 小时。最有趣的是，雄性的活性显示出双峰，当雄性单独时第二个峰值非常微弱，而当雌性存在于 confinement 管中时则更为明显。活性峰值的切换（通过本文建议的峰值匹配指数（PMI）测量）在有和没有雌性的雄性之间有显著差异。
这里使用的适应监测系统允许我们根据活性峰位移的程度来量化单个雄性对附近雌性的反应。在这个方向上，我们创建了峰值匹配指数（PMI），这是一个新的参数，我们预计它可以被解释为雄性对雌性存在的反应倾向，并进一步作为寻找雌性进行交配的潜在指标进行测试。
