Update of knowledge about Leptolegnia chapmanii as an agent of biological control of mosquito Aedes

FALVO, M.; LOPEZ LASTRA, C.C.; CAVALITTO, S.; RUEDA PARAMO, M.; GARCIA, J.J.

Tour

Congreso; International Congress on Invertebrate Pathology and Microbial Control, 49 th Annual Meeting of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology; Tours, Francia 2016.Update of knowledge about Leptolegnia chapmanii as an agent of biological control of mosquito Aedes; 2016

Society for Invertebrate Pathology

Leptolegnia chapmanii (Seymour) Straminipila, Peronosporomycetes is a facultative pathogen of mosquito larvae. Isolates of this microorganism arerestricted to North America and at Southern hemisphere in Argentine. The native isolates from Argentine CEP 010 and CEP 433 are currentlyincluded at fungal entomopathogenic collection in Centro de Estudios Parasitologicos y de Vectores (CEPAVE). Hosts range, its safety against nontargetspecies and some optimal environmental conditions for its infection and development on mosquito larvae under laboratory conditions werepreviously determined. Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) is the main vector of diseases such as yellow fever, dengue, Chikungunya fever, Zika, amongothers. Two fundamental aspects of the knowledge of L. chapmanii were focused. First one was some ecological aspects such as parasitism,persistence and dispersion in environments where naturally take place larvae of Ae. aegypti. With a single pathogen application in containers thefungus persisted about 6 weeks reducing mosquito population with differences in mortality rates between locations. Zoospores iability was alsoaffected for the exposure to UV. Leptolegnia chapmanii was compatible with different concentrations of Neem oil and Diflubenzuron being able toproduce viable zoospores in presence of these products with larvicidal effect. For its massive production an economical solid and liquid culturemedium based on sunflower seed extract was compared with two traditional culture media used in lab. On solid culture medium, L. chapmanii grewin all cases producing posteriorly a higher quantity of zoospores from sunflower medium and showed a good growth patron.