US-Switzerland Cooperative Research: Effect of Mosquito Accessory Gland Components on Pre-oviposition Behavior

该奖项为爱达荷大学昆虫学系马克·J·克洛登教授在苏黎世大学动物学研究所汉斯·布里格尔的实验室休假提供了部分支持。他们对内源性因素如何调控昆虫行为有共同的兴趣，他们将合作研究蚊子卵发育过程中存在的几种体液因素如何抑制寄主寻找并增加对产卵地点的吸引。到目前为止，Klowden教授的方法主要是使用显微外科手术，包括腺体切除和移植。通过与布里格尔博士和苏黎世的其他人合作，他希望学习他们的生化方法，包括分离男性附属腺中的成分的技术。他这次为期六个月的访问的研究目标是提取雄性埃及伊蚊的附腺成分，测试个体成分对怀孕雌性蚊子的行为影响，并确定在产卵前生物测定中显示活性的成分。虽然产卵前行为并不直接影响蚊子种群的媒介潜力，但它是繁殖成功和维持成虫种群密度的主要因素。为了更好地了解蚊媒疾病的流行病学，了解控制蚊子行为的机制以及雌性蚊子如何在特定时间表达特定行为也是有帮助的。可以想象，可以识别出干扰许多不同昆虫产卵前行为的天然产品；然而，首先需要了解调节这种行为的机制。这项研究将有助于实现这一目标。

This award provides partial support for Professor Marc J. Klowden, Division of Entomology, University of Idaho, to spend his sabbatical in the laboratory of Hans Briegel, Institute of Zoology, University of Zurich. They share an interest in how endogenous factors regulate insect behavior, and they will collaborate in a study of how several humoral factors, present during egg development in the mosquito, inhibit host seeking and increase the attraction to oviposition sites. Professor Klowden's approach until now has largely been to use microsurgery, involving gland ablation and transplantation. Through collaboration with Dr. Briegel and others at Zurich, he expects to learn their biochemical approach, including techniques for fractionating the components in the male accessory glands. His research goals for this six-month visit are to extract the accessory gland components of male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, test the individual components for their behavioral effects in gravid females, and identify the components that show activity in the pre-oviposition bioassay. Although pre-oviposition behavior does not directly influence the vector potential of a mosquito population, it is a major factor in reproductive success and the maintenance of adult population densities. In order to understand better the epidemiology of mosquito-borne diseases, it is helpful also to understand the mechanisms that control mosquito behavior and how the female comes to express a particular behavior at a particular time. It is conceivable that natural products could be identified that interfere with the pre-oviposition behavior of many different insects; however, the mechanisms that regulate this behavior need to be understood first. This research will contribute to that goal.