Counter immunoelectrophoresis, a modified technique for the identification of blood meals of sandflies collected from Qualyobia Governorate, Egypt.

Specificity and sensitivity are very important when investigating the blood meals of an insect vector, particularly those having different hosts. Several techniques are used for the identification of the blood meals. Counter immunoelectrophoresis is the technique of choice. The modification was to secure save of time and least amount of materials. In this paper, a modified technique of the counter immunoelectrophoresis (CIEP) was used for the identification of the blood meal of wild Phlebotomus papatasi collected from different sites in Qualyobia Governorate. Eight antisera were used. These were human, cat, dog, rat, sheep, goat, bovine and avian. The results showed that 99.52% of 832 female P. papatasi contained human blood, 0.12% (one female) contained only avian blood and 0.36% or three females each contained mixed blood of human together with dog blood (One), rat blood (one) or avian blood (one). P. papatasi is an anthropophilic insect, but in rare cases, it is zoophilic.