Life History Traits and Demographic Parameters of Triatoma infestans (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) Fed on Human Blood.

MEDONE, P; BALSALOBRE, A; RABINOVICH, J.E; MARTI G. A; MENU, F

minneapolis

Encuentro; Entomological Society of America; 2015

Entomological Society of America

Triatoma infestans (Klug, 1834) (Hemiptera: Reduviidae), themain vector of Chagas disease  in South America, feeds primarily on humans,but ethical reasons preclude carrying out demographical studies using people. Thus, most laboratorystudies of T. infestans are conducted using bird or mammal live hosts that may result in differentdemographic parameters from those obtained on human blood. Therefore, it is of interest to determinewhether the use of an artificial feeder with human blood would be operational to rear triatomines andestimate population growth rates. We estimated life history traits and demographic parameters using anartificial feeder with human blood and compared them with those obtained on live hens. Both groups of T. infestans were kept under constant conditions [2861_C, 4065% relative humidity, a hotoperiod of 12:12 (L:D) h] and fed weekly. On the basis of age-specific survival and age-specific fecundity, wecalculated the intrinsic rate of natural increase (r), the finite rate of population growth (k), the net reproductive rate (Ro), and the meangeneration time (Tg). Our results show differences in life history traitsbetween blood sources, resulting in smaller population growth rates on human blood than on live hens. Althoughdemographic growth rate was smaller on human blood than on hens, it still remains positive, so thebenefit/cost ratio of this feeding method seems relatively attractive. We discuss possibility of usingthe artificial feeder with human blood for both ecological and behavioral studies.