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Southwest Virginia has recently become an emerging focus of activity for La Crosse (LAC) virus, a mosquito-transmitted arbovirus in the California serogroup of Bunyaviruses. In 2005 and 2006, ovitrap surveys were conducted to access the spatiotemporal oviposition activity of LAC virus vectors Aedes triseriatus, Ae. albopictus and Ae. japonicus across a wide region of southwest Virginia. Egg abundance and oviposition patterns of these vectors were significantly different across the three study areas. The primary LAC virus vector, Ae. triseriatus, was collected in the greatest abundance from all three areas, and favored forested habitats. Aedes albopictus was the second most abundant species collected, and was found to favor urban environments. Aedes japonicus also has a preference for urban habitats, and is actively expanding its range throughout southwest Virginia. Dogs were used to determine their efficacy as sentinels for assessing the distribution of LAC virus in southwest Virginia. Canine serum samples were tested using plaque reduction neutralization (PRNT) assays. Of the 436 collected canine serum samples, 21 (4.8%) were positive for LAC virus antibodies. LAC virus seroprevalence was evident in dogs from each study region, including areas where LAC virus human cases and LAC virus positive mosquito isolates have not been reported. As a result, this study provided documentation of horizontal transmission of LAC virus throughout southwest Virginia, demonstrating that dogs make useful sentinels for assessing the distribution of LAC virus in an area. The final objective examined the effects of coinfection with D. immitis microfilariae and LAC virus in three species of Aedes mosquitoes. No significant differences were found between mosquitoes fed dually infected bloodmeals (i.e. D. immitis microfilariae and LAC virus) and those fed bloodmeals containing LAC virus only. A follow-up study found low mosquito midgut penetration rates by D. immitis, despite using biologically significant doses of microfilariae. Failure to demonstrate enhancement of LAC virus in vector mosquitoes suggests that D. immitis does not have a significant impact on LAC virus epidemiology in areas where these organisms co-exist. / Ph. D.

Herbivory by ungulates is a known agent of disturbance in many ecological systems around the globe. At high abundances and through a selective foraging behaviour herbivory may inflict significant direct and indirect effects on local plant and animal communities. Direct effects referto ungulates directly interacting with another species by foraging on plants and incidentally on insect eggs, larvae and/or adults. Indirect effects in this context describes ungulate feeding on plants which indirectly alters the availability and quality of food resources utilized by local insect fauna. Ungulates have even been considered as a potential conservation threat topersistence of some insect species. This aim of this thesis was to study the interaction between a common ungulate, the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), and the rare butterfly Scolitantides orion by sharing the same plant resource, orpine (Hylotelephium telephium).  S. orion is a butterfly species of high conservation concern in Sweden. It is classified as endangered (EN) and has over the last decades experienced significant decrease in population size, mainly as a result of habitat loss and fragmentation. Roe deer has been considered as a potential threat to the population, but the magnitude of the threat has not been studied in detail. The objective of this thesis was to analyse the direct and indirect consequences of roe deer herbivory on S. orion population in the island of Mörtö, Stockholm archipelago. I predicted that roe deer alters the abundance of suitable host plants for oviposition and consumes egg and/or larvae, producing significant differences between protected and unprotected plants. The study was conducted in May-June 2020 in seven selected sites in Mörtö. At the onset of the butterfly season, 47 mesh cages were established sheltering 10.4% of the 1310 plants included in the study. Five inventories were conducted over a five-week time period, where each plant was examined by measuring the height, number of leaves, plant damage and the number of eggs and larvae. These data were used to examine the direct and indirect effect of roe deer foraging.  The results of this study could not confirm that roe deer has a significant direct or indirect effect on S. orion population in Mörtö. Hence, roe deer may not pose as large of a threat as initially expected, at least in this island at this time period. However, this was not the only result from this study. Plant properties such as leaf number and plant height (although not significant) as well as plant quality influenced the host choice for oviposition, with significantly more eggsbeing found on plants with more leaves and less plant damage. Hence, it seems that roe deer and other herbivores indirectly affects the host choice of S. orion by altering plant attractiveness. The reason for this behaviour needs to be studied in detail, but a proposed reason was that females choose plants with less damage to avoid competition and/or predation. Another finding was that a substantial number of eggs were lost over the season, some of which due to incidental feeding by roe deer and other herbivores. However, many eggs were lost without an identified reason, which likely is a result of disease or predators, but this needs to be studiedfurther. Finally, the cage experiment was successful in keeping the roe deer out but not able to cause a difference in egg survival between protected and unprotected plants. This was likely due to low roe deer herbivory in general.  Even though the effect of roe deer on S. orion population was not as significant as expected, it is still important to consider roe deer as a potential threat to the species at its most vulnerable stages as the species is dependent on the host plant for its survival. Hence, it would be interesting to do a similar experiment in a locality with higher deer density to further investigate the effect of roe deer on S. orion populations.

Resources are often unevenly distributed through the environment, resulting in a challenging task for insects to locate food, mates and oviposition sites. Consequently, there is an ongoing need to unravel how insects rely on behavioural and sensory traits while searching for resources in heterogeneous environments. In the first part of this thesis, I addressed this issue by studying how neighbouring resources can affect the likelihood of insects finding their preferred host resources. These effects of neighbouring resources are commonly referred to as associational effects, and are expected to result from limitations in the sensory physiology of insects. Such limitations constrain the insect’s ability to correctly evaluate resource quality at the different steps involved in insect search behaviour. Furthermore, I determined whether the physiological state of an insect, and sensory experiences made during larval stages, can affect host search behaviour in heterogeneous environments. By comparing the behaviour of Drosophila melanogaster in environments with single and multiple resources, I found that the presence of neighbouring recourses increased the selection rates for attractive resources, while it decreased the selection rates for less attractive resources. These effects are referred to as associational susceptibility and associational resistance respectively. Furthermore, by studying oviposition behaviour, I found that during these small-scale behavioural decisions, associational effects are mainly governed by gustatory mediated selection and less by olfactory mediated selection. The oviposition assay eliminated potential misinterpretations of resource quality along the different steps of search behaviour, hence the results suggested that associational effects rely on distinctive selection behaviour between resource types rather than on sensory constraints. In the second part of this thesis I determined whether natal experiences can be used by insects as sensory shortcuts to find host resources, and whether this leads to better larval performance on those selected host resources. For this purpose, I studied the interactions between the larval parasitoid Asecodes lucens and the oligophagous leaf beetle Galerucella sagittariae. The results showed that the relationship between oviposition preference and larval performance, of both insect species, depends on an interactive effect between the insects’ natal origin and the quality of the different host resources. Moreover, I found that the natal origin was a better predictor for the adult host preference, rather than for larval performance. This suggests that, aside from the actual quality of the host resources, locating any suitable host might be even more limiting for the female’s fitness. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Accepted. Paper 3: Submitted.</p>

When ovipositing, prey organisms avoid habitat patches containing predator cues because predators consume, and negatively affect the fitness of their prey. Richness of predator species often enhances the strength of consumptive predator effects, but little is known about how multiple predators combined affect prey non-consumptively. We quantified dipteran colonization in aquatic mesocosms in response to varied predator richness. Multiple predator species combined reduced oviposition by Culex mosquitoes, chironomid midges, and the general colonizing dipteran community more than predicted by the effects of the independent predator species. Previous research which quantifies effects of multiple predators on prey as prey abundance, but does not measure consumption by predators, may be underestimating or overestimating the strength of effect by assuming equal colonization. Our findings enhance understanding of the ways predators influence abundances and distributions of their prey, and yields insight into the ways predators may non-consumptively affect prey by changing prey behavior.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Entomology / Ludek Zurek / Stable flies (Stomoxys calcitrans L.) are blood-feeding insects with a great negative impact on livestock resulting in annual losses around $2 billion in the USA alone. One of the main reasons for such an impact is because stable fly management is very difficult. Stable fly larvae develop primarily in animal manure and live bacteria were shown to be essential for stable fly development. I hypothesized that the microbial community of horse manure changes over time and plays an important role in stable fly fitness. Two-choice bioassays were conducted using 2 week old horse manure (control) and aging horse manure (fresh to 5 week old) to evaluate the effect of manure age on stable fly oviposition. The results showed that fresh manure did not stimulate oviposition and that the attractiveness increased as manure aged but started to decline after 3 weeks. Stable fly eggs artificially placed on 1, 2, and 3 week old manure resulted in significantly higher survival and heavier adults comparing to those developing in fresh, 4, and 5 week old manure. Analysis of the bacterial community of aging horse manure by 454-pyrosequencing of 16S rDNA revealed a major shift from strict anaerobes (e.g. Clostridium, Eubacterium, Prevotella, Bacteroidales) in fresh manure to facultative anaerobes and strict aerobes (e.g. Rhizobium, Devosia, Brevundimonas, Sphingopyxis, Comamonas, Pseudomonas) in 1-5 week old manure. Identified volatile compounds emitted from 2 and 3 week old horse manure included phenol, indole, p-cresol, and m-cresol. However, none of them stimulated stable fly oviposition in two-choice assays. In conclusion, the microbial community of 2 and 3 week old horse manure stimulates stable fly oviposition and provides a suitable habitat for stable fly development. Manure at this stage should be the main target for disrupting the stable fly life cycle. Volatile compounds acting as oviposition stimulants/attractants and their specific bacterial origin remain to be determined. Better understanding of stable fly microbial ecology is critical for development of novel management strategies based on alteration of the microbial community of stable fly habitat to generate a substrate that is non-conducive to fly oviposition and/or larval development.

Coleomegilla maculata is a beneficial coccinellid commonly found in sweet cornfields in Kentucky. Previous work on C. maculata has shown an ovipositional preferencefor the weed Acalypha ostryaefolia, compared to three selected weed species and corn. Also, predation of C. maculata egg clusters on A. ostryaefolia was less compared toclusters on corn and the presence of A. ostryaefolia led to higher densities of C. maculata larvae on corn. I determined C. maculata ovipositional preference among weed species in fieldtests using nine common weeds. I also examined ovipositional preference using just A.ostryaefolia and Abutilon theophrasti. I assessed the roles of potential prey densities,plant structures, and weed attractiveness to adult C. maculata. Finally, I examineddiurnal and nocturnal predation of C. maculata eggs on corn, A. ostryaefolia, A.theophrasti, and Amaranthus hybridus. Significant ovipositional preference was always observed for A. theophrasti. C. maculata egg clusters on A. theophrasti and A.ostryaefolia were preyed upon less frequently than clusters on A. hybridus and corn.

xiii, 141 p. : ill. (some col.) / The small trochid gastropod <italic>Lirularia succincta</italic> occurs in rocky intertidal habitats along the Pacific coast of North America. Strong escape responses of adult <italic>L. succincta</italic> were elicited by the predatory seastars <italic>Leptasterias hexactis</italic> and <italic>Pycnopodia helianthoides</italic> but not by the nonpredatory seastar <italic>Henricia</italic> sp. Escape responses to juvenile <italic>L. hexactis</italic> were not observed in newly-hatched <italic>L. succincta</italic>. The snails exhibited weak avoidance responses to water-borne chemical stimuli from <italic>L. hexactis</italic>. The vertical distribution of a population of <italic>L. succincta</italic> was described, and changes in the size-frequency distribution of the population in the spring and summer were documented. Finally, factors that may affect oviposition in <italic>L. succincta</italic> were investigated in the laboratory. The snails deposit egg masses year round with a peak in reproductive output in the summer. In the laboratory and in the field, egg masses are preferentially deposited in crevices. / Committee in charge: Dr. Craig M. Young, Chair; Dr. Richard B. Emlet, Member; Dr. Alan L. Shanks, Member

Orientador: Paulo Sérgio Moreira Carvalho de Oliveira / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Biologia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-26T11:02:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Mota_LuisaLimae_M.pdf: 2431693 bytes, checksum: af49f66454904ecb2d987348646ea0e0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: A escolha do local de oviposição tem grande influência na aptidão das fêmeas de Lepidoptera, uma vez que as larvas têm mobilidade restrita. Pistas químicas, visuais e/ou táteis provindas da planta hospedeira costumam ser utilizadas, mas também são importantes a presença de inimigos naturais ou parceiros mutualistas. No caso de espécies mirmecófilas, a oviposição pode ser mediada pelas formigas atendentes, mas pouco se sabe sobre como as borboletas percebem as formigas e as utilizam como sinal. Parrhasius polibetes, um licenídeo polífago que apresenta mirmecofilia facultativa, é comumente encontrada em Schefflera vinosa (Araliaceae), uma planta que também pode abrigar agregações do membracídeo Guayaquila xiphias. P. polibetes e G. xiphias podem ser atendidas pelas mesmas formigas, e larvas de P. polibetes tem sua sobrevivência aumentada quando ocorrem próximas às associações G. xiphias + formigas, e as borboletas adultas preferem ovipositar em ramos onde a associação está presente, embora não se conheça qual sinal é utilizado para essa escolha. Este trabalho teve por objetivo investigar se P. polibetes reconhece visualmente a associação e a utiliza como pista para oviposição. Foram feitos experimentos com formigas e membracídeos secos montados em ramos pareados de S. vinosa, entre os quais a borboleta poderia escolher. Fêmeas de P. polibetes preferiram ovipositar em ramos contendo a pista visual de formigas + membracídeos ou apenas de formigas, não havendo preferência quando apenas membracídeos estavam presentes. O número de ovos foi maior apenas quando a pista visual de formigas + membracídeos estava presente. Isso revela a importância da visão para a escolha do local de oviposição por P. polibetes, embora não se descarte o uso de pistas químicas ou táteis. A imagem de formigas deve ser recorrente em muitas espécies de plantas hospedeiras utilizadas por P. polibetes, e fêmeas capazes de utilizá-la na hora da oviposição teriam vantagem dada a importância das formigas para a sobrevivência das larvas. As pistas utilizadas por borboletas com diferentes níveis de mirmecofilia para escolha do local de oviposição representam um campo de estudo pouco explorado, que poderá revelar novos aspectos sobre a interação entre lepidópteros e formigas / Abstract: Because the larvae have restricted mobility, the location chosen for oviposition and immature development may have a crucial effect on Lepidoptera fitness. Chemical, visual and/or tactile cues from the host plant are usually utilized during host plant selection, but the presence of natural enemies or mutualistic partners is also important. In the case of myrmecophilous species, oviposition can be mediated by the tending ants, but little is known about how the female perceive ants, and use them as cues. Parrhasius polibetes, a poliphagous lycaenid that presents facultative myrmecophily, is commonly found in Schefflera vinosa (Araliaceae), a bush commonly hosting aggregations of the treehopper Guayaquila xiphias. P. polibetes and G. xiphias can be tended by the same ants, and P. polibetes larvae have their survivorship increased when they occur close to associations of G. xiphias + ants. Female butterflies prefer to oviposit on branches where the association is present, even though the signal used in this choice is unknown. The objective of this study was to investigate whether P. polibetes visually recognize ant-treehopper associations and use them as clue for oviposition. Behavioral trials consisted of dried ants and treehoppers mounted on paired S. vinosa branches, between which the butterfly could choose. P. polibetes females preferred to oviposit on branches containing ants + treehoppers or only ants, and showed no preference when only treehoppers were present. The number of eggs was greater only when both ants and treehoppers were present on a branch. These results reveal the importance of vision during the oviposition process in P. polibetes, even though chemical and tactile clues may also be used. The image of ants is probably recurrent in many host plant species used by P. polibetes, and females capable of perceiving them during oviposition would have an advantage, given the importance of ants for larval survival in this species. So far, the cues used during egg-laying by butterflies with different levels of myrmecophily have not been explored in detail; and further investigations might reveal new aspects about the behavioral interface of butterfly-ant interactions / Mestrado / Ecologia / Mestra em Ecologia

The family Bunyaviridae is the largest of vertebrate diseases and includes the mosquito-borne disease La Crosse (LAC) virus. Vectors include the major vector Aedes triseriatus and two accessory vectors Aedes albopictus and Aedes japonicus. In the past several decades there has been an increase in the number of LAC cases, implication of new vectors, and the appearance of new foci of disease in the southeastern U.S. To better understand the vectors and the relationship between vectors and the virus, laboratory and field studies were conducted to determine oviposition preferences, effect of virus infection on blood-feeding behavior, and compare the efficacy of various methods to determine minimum infection rates of vectors. In laboratory studies of oviposition preference, only Ae. japonicus demonstrated a preference when presented with preexisting eggs. They deposited more eggs in cups containing either conspecifics or Ae. albopictus. The presence of 1st instar larvae Ae. albopictus larvae deterred oviposition by Ae. triseriatus and Ae. japonicus. Ae. japonicus and Ae. triseriatus preferred cups containing larval rearing water (LRW) of conspecifics and Ae. albopictus. Aedes albopictus preferred LRW regardless of species compared to control cups. Field experiments with fresh egg papers and preexisting eggs did not show significant differences, although the unequal population densities of species in the study area confounded the analysis. More work is needed to elucidate the interaction among these species and its effect on oviposition in the field. Blood-feeding experiments showed that LAC virus-infected Ae. triseriatus and Ae. albopictus imbibed significantly less blood compared to uninfected mosquitoes. Because blood meal size affects the subsequent inhibition of host seeking, experiments were done to ascertain the effect of virus infection on refeeding. Significantly more infected Ae. triseriatus mosquitoes refed but there was no effect on the refeeding rate of Ae. albopictus. Thus, the detrimental effect of virus infection, i.e., reduction in blood meal size, may lead to increased host exposure by Ae. triseriatus, enhancing horizontal transmission. Collecting adult mosquitoes was more efficient to detect virus in field populations than the collection of eggs. Maximum likelihood estimation-infection rates (MLE-IR) were calculated using bias-corrected maximum likelihood estimation. Adult collections yielded significantly more positive pools compared with egg collections. Virus was isolated from pools from Ae. canadensis, Ae. triseriatus, and Ae. albopictus. These results are comparable to other studies. / Ph. D.