Trapping behaviour of the biological control agent Duddingtonia flagrans against gastrointestinal nematodes of sheep and cattle in the environment under spring conditions

FERNÁNDEZ, SILVINA; SAGÜES, FEDERICA; IGLESIAS, LUCÍA; ZEGBI, SARA; SAUMELL, CARLOS

Mar del Plata

Encuentro; X Encuentro Biólogos En Red; 2015

Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, UNMdP

An experiment was carried out using the nematophagous fungi Duddingtonia flagrans as biological control agent of gastrointestinal nematodes of sheep and cattle, when exposed to the spring climatic conditions of central Buenos Aires province, Argentina. For each animal species, 40 artificially-formed faecal pats containing trichostrongyle eggs were deposited on pasture, 20 under direct sun and 20 under shadow. Half of the faecal pats contained 11,000 fungal chlamydospores/g of faeces and the other half remained as control. GraphPad Prism® v. 5.04 software was used for statistical analysis.Coprocultures performed to assess the in vitro nematophagous effect of the fungus revealed that D. flagrans was capable of reducing the trichostrongyle larval population by 78.3% (P